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FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
BISHOP JOHN C. KILGO 





PRESENTED TO 


DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
BY 


HIS CHILDREN 


1946 


















hawk 


SITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE 





Expositions of Holy Scripture 


A Commentary on the Entire Bible, 
to be Completed in Thirty Volumes 


ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D., LIT.D. 


To be published in series of six large 
octavo volumes, magnificently bound in 
red buckram cloth, printed m special 
type of unique and beautiful face, and 
on specially imported English feather- 
weight paper. 



































fy": ALEXANDER MACLAREN’s incomparable position as the prince 
of expositors has for more than a generation been recognized 
throughout the English-speaking world. He holds an unchallenged 
position, and it it is believed that this series, embodying as it does the 
treasure store of DR. MACLAREN’s life-work, will be found of price- 
less value by preachers, teachers, and readers of the bible generally. 












What Ministers say of Dr. Maclaren 


Tueopore L. Cuvier, D.D.: “ Al- 
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ministers any similar body of production 
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SOLD ONLY IN SERIES OF SIX VOLUMES 
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FIRST SERIES, SIX VOLUMES 
GENESIS ISAIAH JEREMIAH St. MATTHEW (3 vols.) 
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Exopus, Leviticus AND NUMBERS DEUTERONOMY, JOSHUA 
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SECOND Book oF KIncs, from Chap. 7. at«<sa CHRONICLES, EZRA 
NEHEMIAH ESTHER Jos $PROVERBS _ECCLESIASTES 






































THE BOOKS OF ESTHER 
JOB, PROVERBS, AND 
ECCLESIASTES 


‘BY 


ALEXANDER MACLAREN 


D.D., Litt. D. 


NEW YORK | 
A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON 
3 & 6 WEST EIGHTEENTH STREET 
LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
MCMVIII 





CONTENTS 


THE BOOK OF ESTHER 


PAGE 

THe Net SPREAD (Esther iii.1-11) . : . : 1 

EsTHER’s VENTURE (Esther iv. 10-17; v. 1-3) , . 6 

MORDECAI AND EstTHER (Esther iv. 14) . . -, if 

THE Net BRoKEN (Esther viii. 3-8, 15-17) . ’ at oe 
THE BOOK OF JOB 

SorRow THAT WorsHIPS (Job i. 21) : * » 2 


THE PEACEABLE FRUITS OF SORROWS RIGHTLY BORNE 


(Job Vv. 17-27) . e . . e . 33 
Two Kinps oF HopE (Job viii. 14; Romansv.5) . = 640 
JoB’s QUESTION, JESUS’ ANSWER (Job xiv. 14; John xi, 25, 26) 43 


KNOWLEDGE AND PEACE (Job xxii. 21) : ° - 49 


vi CONTENTS 


PAGE 
Waat LiFE MAY BE MADE (Job xxii. 26-29) . » 58 
‘Tae END oF THE LoRD’ (Job xlii.1-10) . . - 68 


THE PROVERBS 


A Youne Man’s Best CounsgELLOR (Proverbs i, 1-19) see 
Wispom’s CALL (Proverbs i. 20-33) . ‘ ° . 
THE SECRET OF WELL-BEING (Proverbs iii. 1-10) . © 


Tae Girts oF HEAVENLY WisDoM (Proverbsiii. 11-24) . 
THe Two Patus (Proverbs iv. 10-19) . : . 
MonoTony AND CRISES (Proverbsiv.12) , , » 101 


From Dawn To Noon (Proverbs iv. 18; Matt. xiii. 43) a) Wee 


KEEPING AND Kept (Proverbs iv. 23; 1Peteri.5) .  . 6 
THE Corps oF Sin (Proverbs v. 22) . , . . 123 
Wispom’s Girt (Proverbs viii. 21) . . er 
WispoMm AND CuRist (Proverbs viii. 30, 31) : . 196 


THE Two-FoLD ASPECT OF THE DIVINE WoRKING (Pro- 


verbs x. 29) . . . : : . 14 


THE MANY-SIDED CONTRAST OF WISDOM AND FoLty (Pro- 


verbs xii. 1-15) ‘ . ; : . 155 


Tux Poor RIcH AND THE RicH Poor (Proverbs xiii.7) + 168 


CONTENTS vil 


PAGE 
THE TILLAGE OF THE Poor (Proverbs xiii. 23) i - 18 
Sin THE MocKER (Proverbs xiv. 9) . : : - 181 


Hottow Laveuter, Soup Joy (Prov. xiv. 13; John xv. 11) 187 
SATISFIED FROM SELF (Proverbs xiv. 14) . . ened 


Wauart I THINK OF MYSELF AND WHAT GOD THINKS OF 


ME (Proverbs xvi. 2) . : . , » 195 
A BuNDLE oF PROVERBS (Proverbs xvi. 22-33) ° ». 204 
Two ForTRESSES (Proverbs xviii.10,11) , , - 210 
A Srrine oF PEARLS (Proverbs xx. 1-7). . . 220 
THE SLUGGARD IN HARvEsT (Proverbs xx. 4) , - 226 
BREAD AND GRAVEL (Proverbs xx. 17) . E » 236 
A CONDENSED GUIDE FOR LIFE (Proverbs xxiii. 15-23) » 240 


THE AFTERWARDS AND OuUR Hope (Proverbs xxiii. 17,18) . 247 


THE PORTRAIT OF A DRUNKARD (Proverbs xxiii, 29-35) - 256 
THE CRIME OF NEGLIGENCE (Proverbs xxiv. 11, 12) Sa 20o 
THE SLUGGARD’s GARDEN (Proverbs xxiv. 30,31) , - 269 
AN UNWALLED City (‘Proverbs XXV. 28) ot 4 HACE! 
THE WEIGHT OF SAND (Proverbs xxvii. 3) « , - 279 
PORTRAIT OF A MATRON (Proverbs xxxi. 10-31) : » 288 


AREEAD 


viii CONTENTS 


ECCLESIASTES; OR, THE PREACHER 


WHat PAssES AND WHAT ABIDES (Eccles, i. 4; 1 John 


ii, 17) . : : , : i : 


THE PAST AND THE FUTURE (Eccles. i. 9; 1 Peter iv. 2,3) . 


Two Views oF Lire (Eccles, i. 13; Hebrews xii. 10) : 
‘A Time TO PLant’ (Eccles. iii. 2) . . ; : 
ETERNITY IN THE HEART (Eccles. iii. 11) . . : 


LESSONS FOR WORSHIP AND FOR WORK (Eccles. v, 1-12) . 


NAKED OR CLOTHED? (Eccles. v. 15; Rev. xiv. 13) . . 
Finis Coronat Opus (Eccles. vii. 8) , : , 
MIsuSsED ResPiTsE (Eccles. viii. 11) . » : . 
FENCES AND SERPENTS (Eccles. x. 8) : a 
THE WAy TO THE City (Eccles. x. 15) . . . 


A New YEAR’s SERMON TO THE Younc (Eccles. xi. 9; xii. 1) 


THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER (Eccles. xii. 1-7,13 14) . 


§ & 


e 


29 88 8 8 & 8 


THE BOOK OF ESTHER 


THE NET SPREAD 


* After these things did king Ahasuerus promote Haman the son of Hammedatha 
the Agagite, and advanced him, and set his seat above all the princes that were 
with him. 2. And all the king’s servants, that were in the king’s gate, bowed, 
and reverenced Haman: for the king had so commanded concerning him. But 
Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence. 3. Then the king’s servants which 
were in the king’s gate, said unto Mordecai, Why transgressest thou the king’s 
commandment? 4. Now it came to pass, when they spake daily unto him, and he 
hearkened not unto them, that they told Haman, to see whether Mordecai’s 
matters would stand: for he had told them that he was a Jew. 5. And when 
Haman saw that Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence, then was Haman 
full of wrath. 6. And he thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai alone; for they 
had showed him the people of Mordecai: wherefore Haman sought to destroy all 
the Jews that were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus, even the people 
of Mordecai. 7. In the first month, that is, the month Nisan, in the twelfth year 
of king Ahasuerus, they cast Pur, that is, the lot, before Haman from day to day, 
and from month to month, to the twelfth month, that is, the month Adar. 
8. And Haman said unto king Ahasuerus, There is a certain people scattered 
abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of thy kingdom; and 
their laws are diverse from all people; neither keep they the king’s laws: there- 
foreit is not for the king’s profit to suffer them. 9. If it please the king, let it be 
written that they may be destroyed: and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver 
to the hands of those that have the charge of the business, to bring it into the 
king’s treasuries. 10. And the king took his ring from his hand, and gave it unto 
Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the Jews’ enemy. 11. And the king 
said unto Haman, The silver is given to thee, the people also, to do with them as 
it seemeth good to thee.’—HEsTHER iii, 1-11. 


THE stage of this passage is filled by three strongly 
marked and strongly contrasted figures: Mordecai, 
Haman, and Ahasuerus; a sturdy nonconformist, an 
arrogant and vindictive minister of state, and a despotic 
and careless king. These three are the visible persons, 
but behind them is an unseen and unnamed Presence, 
the God of Israel, who still protects His exiled people. 
We note, first, the sturdy nonconformist. ‘The rev- 
erence’ which the king had commanded his servants to 
show to Haman was not simply a sign of respect, but 
an act of worship. Eastern adulation regarded a 
A 


2 THE BOOK OF ESTHER  [ca. m1. 


monarch as in some sense a god, and we know that 
divine honours were in later times paid to Roman em- 
perors, and many Christians martyred for refusing to 
render them. The command indicates that Ahasuerus 
desired Haman to be regarded as his representative, 
and possessing at least some reflection of godhead 
from him. European ambassadors to Eastern courts 
have often refused to prostrate themselves before the 
monarch on the ground of its being degradation to 
their dignity; but Mordecai stood erect while the 
crowd of servants lay flat on their faces, as the great 


man passed through the gate, because he would have | 


no share in an act of worship to any but Jehovah. 
He might have compromised with conscience, and 
found some plausible excuses if he had wished. He 
could have put his own private interpretation on the 
prostration, and said to himself, ‘I have nothing to do 
with the meaning that others attach to bowing before 
Haman. I mean by it only due honour to the second 
man in the kingdom. But the monotheism of his race 
was too deeply ingrained in him, and so he Kephe a stiff 
backbone’ and ‘ bowed not down.’ 

That his refusal was based on religious scruples is 
the natural inference from his having told his fellow- 
porters that he was a Jew. That fact would explain 
his attitude, but would also isolate him still more. 
His obstinacy piqued them, and they reported his 
contumacy to the great man, thus at once gratifying 
personal dislike, racial hatred, and religious antagonism, 
and recommending themselves to Haman as solicitous 
for his dignity. We too are sometimes placed in cir- 
cumstances where we are tempted to take part in what 
may be called constructive idolatry. There arise, in 
our necessary co-operation with those who do not 





vs. 1-11] THE NET SPREAD 3 


share in our faith, occasions when we are expected to 
unite in acts which we are thought very straitlaced 
for refusing to do, but which, conscience tells us, 
cannot be done without practical disloyalty to Jesus 
Christ. Whenever that inner voice says ‘Don't, we 
must disregard the persistent solicitations of others, 
and be ready to be singular, and run any risk rather 
than comply. ‘So did not I, because of the fear of 
God, has to be our motto, whatever fellow-servants 
may say. The gate of Ahasuerus’s palace was not a 
favourable soil for the growth of a devout soul, but 
flowers can bloom on dunghills, and there have been 
‘saints’ in ‘ Cesar’s household.’ 

Haman is a sharp contrast to Mordecai. He is the 
type of the unworthy characters that climb or crawl 
to power in a despotic monarchy, vindictive, arrogant, 
cunning, totally oblivious of the good of the subjects, 
using his position for his own advantage, and fero- 
ciously cruel. He had naturally not noticed the one 
erect figure among the crowd of abject ones, but the 
insignificant Jew became important when pointed out. 
If he had bowed, he would have been one more nobody, 
but his not bowing made him somebody who had to be 
erushed. The childish burst of passion is very charac- 
teristic, and not less true to life is the extension of the 
anger and thirst for vengeance to ‘all the Jews that 
were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus.’ 


. They were ‘the people of Mordecai, and that was 


enough. ‘He thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai 
alone. What a perverted notion of personal dignity 
which thought the sacrifice of the one offender beneath 
it, and could only be satisfied by a blood-bath into 
which a nation should be plunged! Such an extreme 
of frantic lust for murder is only possible in such a 





4 THE BOOK OF ESTHER _ [e#. m1 


state as Ahasuerus’s Persia, but the prostitution of 
public position to personal ends, and the adoption of 
political measures at the bidding of wounded vanity, 
and to gratify blind hatred of a race, is possible still, 
and it becomes all Christian men to use their influence 
that the public acts of their nation shall be clear of 
that taint. 

Haman was as superstitious as cruel, and so he 
sought for auguries from heaven for his hellish pur- 
pose, and cast the lot to find the favourable day for 
bringing it about. He is not the only one who has 
sought divine approval for wicked public acts. Religion 
has been used to varnish many a crime, and Te Dewms 
sung for many a victory which was little better than 
Haman’s plot. 

The crafty denunciation of the Jews to the king isa 
good specimen of the way in which a despot is hood- 
winked by his favourites, and made their tool. It was, 
no doubt, true that the Jews’ laws were ‘diverse from 
those of every people, but it was not true that they 
did not ‘keep the king’s laws,’ except in so far as these 
required worship of other gods. In all their long dis- 
persion they have been remarkable for two things,— 
their tenacious adherence to the Law, so far as possible. 
in exile, and their obedience to the law of the country of 
their sojourn. No doubt, the exiles in Persian territory 
presented the same characteristics. But Haman has 
had many followers in resenting the distinctiveness of 
the Jew, and charging on them crimes of which they 
were innocent. From Mordecai onwards it has been 
so, and Europe is to-day disgraced by a crusade against 
them less excusable than Haman’s. Hatred still masks 
itself under the disguise of political expediency, and 
says, ‘It is not for the king’s profit to suffer them.’ 


' 





vs. 1-11] THE NET SPREAD 5 


But the true half of the charge was a eulogium, for it 
implied that the scattered exiles were faithful to God's 
laws, and were marked off by their lives. That ought 
to be true of professing Christians. They should obvi- 
ously be living by other principles than the world 
adopts. The enemy’s charge ‘shall turn unto you 
for a testimony. Happy shall we be if observers are 
prompted to say of us that ‘our laws are diverse’ from 
those of ungodly men around us! 

The great bribe which Haman offered to the king is 
variously estimated as equal to from three to four 
millions sterling. He, no doubt, reckoned on making 
more than that out of the confiscation of Jewish 
property. That such an offer should have been made 
by the chief minister to the king, and that for sucha 
purpose, reveals a depth of corruption which would be 
incredible if similar horrors were not recorded of other 
Eastern despots. But with Turkey still astonishing 
the world, no one can call Haman’s offer too atrocious 
to be true. 

Ahasuerus is the vain-glorious king known to us as 
Xerxes. His conduct in the affair corresponds well 
enough with his known character. The lives of thou- 
sands of law-abiding subjects are tossed to the favourite 
without inquiry or hesitation. He does not even ask 
the name of the ‘certain people, much less require 
proof of the charge against them. The insanity of 
weakening his empire by killing so many of its inhabit- 
ants does not strike him, nor does he ever seem to think 
that he has duties to those under his rule. Careless of 
the sanctity of human life, too indolent to take trouble 
to see things with his own eyes, apparently without 
the rudiments of the idea of justice, he wallowed in a 
sty of self-indulgence, and, while greedy of adulation 





6 THE BOOK OF ESTHER  [om.1v. 


and the semblance of power, let the reality slip from 
his hands into those of the favourite, who played on 
his vices as on an instrument, and pulled the strings 
that moved the puppet. We do not produce kings of 
that sort nowadays, but King Demos has his own vices, 
and is as easily blinded and swayed as Ahasuerus. In 
every form of government, monarchy or republic, there 
will be would-be leaders, who seek to gain influence 
and carry their objects by tickling vanity, operating on 
vices, calumniating innocent men, and the other arts of 
the demagogue. Where the power is in the hands of the 
people, the people is very apt to take its responsibilities 
as lightly as Ahasuerus did his, and to let itself be led 
blindfold by men with personal ends to serve, and 
hiding them under the veil of eager desire for the public 
good. Christians should ‘play the citizen as it becomes 
the gospel of Christ,’ and take care that they are not 
beguiled into national enmities and public injustice by 
the specious talk of modern Hamans. 


ESTHER’S VENTURE 


‘ Again Esther spake unto Hatach, and gave him commandment unto Mordecai: 
11. All the king’s servants, and the people of the king’s provinces, do know, that 
whosoever, whether man or woman, shall come unto the king into the inner court, 
who is not called, there is one law of his to put him to death, except such to whom 
the king shall hold out the golden sceptre, that he may live: but I have not been 
called to come in unto the king these thirty days. 12. And they told to Mordecai 
Esther’s words. 13. Then Mordecai commanded to answer Esther, Think not with 
thyself that thou shalt escape in the king's house, more than all the Jews. 14. For 
if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and 
deliverance arise to the Jews from another place ; but thou and thy father’s house 
shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for 
such a time as this? 15. Then Esther bade them return Mordecai this answer, 
16. Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for 
me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens 
will fast likewise; and so will I goin unto the king, which is not according to the 
law:-and if I perish, I perish. 17. So Mordecai went his way, and did ee 
to all that Esther had commanded him. 

‘Now it came to pass on the third day, that Esther put on her royal dipped and 
stood in the inner court of the king’s house, over against the king’s house: and the 
king sat upon his royal throne in the royal house, over against the gate of the 


ee ee a ee 


vs.10-17] ESTHERS VENTURE 7 


house. 2. Andit was so, when the king saw Esther the queen standing in the court. 
that she obtained favour in his sight: and the king held out to Hsther the golden 
sceptre that was in his hand. So Esther drew near, and touched the top of the 
sceptre. 3. Then said the king unto her, What wilt thou, queen Esther? and whati 
is thy request? it shall be even given thee to the half of the kingdom.’—EsTHER 
iv. 10-17; v.13. 

PATRIOTISM is more evident than religion in the Book 
of Esther. To turn to it after the fervours of prophets 
and the continual recognition of God in history which 
marks the other historical books, is like coming down 
from heaven to earth, as Ewald says. But that differ- 
ence in tone probably accurately represents the differ- 
ence between the saints and heroes of an earlier age 
and the Jews in Persia, in whom national feeling was 
stronger than devotion. The picture of their charac- 
teristics deducible from this Book shows many of the 
traits which have marked them ever since,—accommo- 
dating flexibility, strangely united with unbending 
tenacity; a capacity for securing the favour of influ- 
ential people, and willingness to stretch conscience in 
securing it; reticence and diplomacy; and, beneath all, 
unquenchable devotion to Israel, which burns alike in 
the politic Mordecai and the lovely Esther. 

There is not much audible religion in either, but in 
this lesson Mordecai impressively enforces his assurance 
that Israel cannot perish, and his belief in Providence 
setting people in their places for great unselfish ends; 
and Esther is ready to die, if need be, in trying to save 
her people, and thinks that fasting and prayer will 
help her in her daring attempt. These two cousins, 
unlike in so much, were alike in their devotion to 
Israel; and though they said little about their religion, 
they acted it, which is better. 

It is very like Jews that the relationship between 
Mordecai and Esther should have been kept dark. 
Nobody but one or two trusted servants knew that the 


8 THE BOOK OF ESTHER [cx 1v. 


porter was the queen’s cousin, and probably her Jewish 
birth was also unknown. Secrecy is, no doubt, the 
armour of oppressed nations; but it is peculiarly © 
agreeable to the descendants of Jacob, who was a 
master of the art. There must have been wonderful 
self-command on both sides to keep such a secret, and 
true affection, to preserve intercourse through apparent 
indifference. 

Our passage begins in the middle of Esther's conver- 
sation with the confidential go-between, who told her 
of the insane decree for the destruction of the Jews, 
and of Mordecai’s request that she should appeal to 
the king. She reminds him of what he knew well 
enough, the law that unsummoned intruders into the 
presence are liable to death; and adds what, of course, 
he did not know, that she had not been summoned for 
a month. We need not dwell on this ridiculously 
arrogant law, but may remark that the substantial 
accuracy of the statement is confirmed by classical and 
other authors, and may pause for a moment to note 
the glimpse given here of the delirium of self-importance 
in which these Persian kings lived, and to see in it no 
small cause of their vices and disasters. What chance 
of knowing facts or of living a wholesome life had a 
man shut off thus from all but lickspittles and slaves? 
No wonder that the victims of such dignity beat the 
sea with rods, when it was rude enough to wreck their 
ships! No wonder that they wallowed in sensuality, 
and lost pith and manhood! No wonder that Greece 
crushed their unwieldy armies and fleets! 

And what a glimpse into their heart-emptiness and 
degradation of sacred ties is given in the fact that — 
Esther the queen had not seen Ahasuerus for a month, 
though living in the same palace, and his favourite 


vs.10-17]} ESTHER’S VENTURE 9 


wife! No doubt, the experiences of exile had some- 
thing to do in later ages with the decided preference of 
the Jew for monogamy. 

But, passing from this, we need only observe how 
clearly Esther sees and how calmly she tells Mordecai 
the tremendous risk which following his counsel would 
bring. Note that she does not refuse. She simply 
puts the case plainly, as if she invited further com- 
munication. ‘This is how things stand. Do you still 
wish me to run the risk?’ That is poor courage which 
has to shut its eyes in order to keep itself up to the 
mark. Unfortunately, the temperament which clearly 
sees dangers and that which dares them are not often 
found together in due proportion, and so men are 
over-rash and over-cautious. This young queen with 
her clear eyes saw, and with her brave heart was 
ready to face, peril to her life. Unless we fully realise 
difficulties and dangers beforehand, our enthusiasm for 
great causes will ooze out at our fingers’ ends at the 
first rude assault of these. So let us count the cost 
before we take up arms, and let us take up arms 
after we have counted the cost. Cautious courage, 
courageous caution, are good guides. Hither alone 
is a bad one. 

Mordecai’s grand message is a condensed statement 
of the great reasons which always exist for self- 
sacrificing efforts for others’ good. His words are 
none the less saturated with devout thought because 
they do not name God. This porter at the palace gate 
had not the tongue of a psalmist or of a prophet. 
He was a plain man, not uninfluenced by his pagan 
surroundings, and perhaps he was careful to adapt his 
message to the lips of the Gentile messenger, and 
therefore did not more definitely use the sacred name. 


X Sh ie ASE Padied 
RTS es: 


of 


10 THE BOOK OF ESTHER _[cx.1v. 


It is very striking that Mordecai makes no attempt . 
to minimise Esther’s peril in doing as he wished. He 
knew that she would take her life in her hand, and he 
expects her to be willing to do it, as he would have ~ 
been willing. It is grand when love exhorts loved 
ones to a course which may bring death to them, and 
lifelong loneliness and quenched hopes to it. Think 
of Mordecai’s years of care over and pride in his fair 
young cousin, and how many joys and soaring visions 
would perish with her, and then estimate the heroic 
self-sacrifice he exercised in urging her to her course. 

His first appeal is on the lowest ground. Pure 
selfishness should send her to the king; for, if she did 
not go, she would not escape the common ruin. So, on 
the one hand, she had to face certain destruction; and, 
on the other, there were possible success and escape. 
It may seem unlikely that the general massacre should 
include the favourite queen, and especially as her 
nationality was apparently a secret. But when a mob 
has once tasted blood, its appetite is great and its scent 
keen, and there are always informers at hand to point 
to hidden victims. The argument holds in reference to 
many forms of conflict with national and social evils. 
If Christian people allow vice and godlessness to riot 
unchecked, they will not escape the contagion, in some 
form or other. How many good men’s sons have been 
swept away by the immoralities of great cities! How 
few families there are in which there is not ‘one 
dead, the victim of drink and dissipation! How 
the godliness of the Church is cooled down by the 
low temperature around! At the very lowest, self- 
preservation should enlist all good men in a sacred 
war against the sins which are slaying their country- 
men. If smallpox breaks out in the slums, it will 


vs.10-17] ESTHER’ VENTURE 11 


come uptown into the grand houses, and the outcasts 
will prove that they are the rich man’s brethren by 
infecting him, and perhaps killing him. 

Mordecai goes back to the same argument in the 
later part of his answer, when he foretells the destruc- 
tion of Esther and her father’s house. There he puts 
it, however, in a rather different light. The destruction 
is not now, as before, her participation in the common 
tragedy, but her exceptional ruin while Israel is pre- 
served. The unfaithful one, who could have inter- 
vened to save, and did not, will have a special infliction 
of punishment. That is true in many applications. 
Certainly, neglect to do what we can do for others does 
always bring some penalty on the slothful coward; 
and there is no more short-sighted policy than that 
which shirks plain duties of beneficence from regard 
to self. 

But higher considerations than selfish ones are 
appealed to. Mordecai is sure that deliverance will 
come. He does not know whence, but come it will. 
How did he arrive at that serene confidence? Certainly 
because he trusted God’s ancient promises, and believed 
in the indestructibility of the nation which a divine 
hand protected. How does such a confidence agree 
with fear of ‘destruction’? The two parts of Mordecai’s 
message sound contradictory; but he might well dread 
the threatened catastrophe, and yet be sure that 
through any disaster Israel as a nation would pass, 
cast down, no doubt, but not destroyed. 

How did it agree with his earnestness in trying to 
secure Esther's help? If he was certain of the issue, 
why should he have troubled her or himself? Just for 
the same reason that the discernment of God’s purposes 
and absolute reliance on these stimulate, and do not 


7) <r eee 
Ps Be! 5.” tet 
?. 


12 THE BOOK OF ESTHER _ [en.1v. 


paralyse, devout activity in helping to carry them out. 
If we are sure that a given course, however full of 
peril and inconvenience, is in the line of God’s purposes, 
that is a reason for strenuous effort to carry it out. — 
Since some men are to be honoured to be His instru- 
ments, shall not we be willing to offer ourselves? There 
is a holy and noble ambition which covets the dignity 
of being used by Him. They who believe that their 
work helps forward what is dear to God's heart may 
well do with their might what they find to do, and not 
be too careful to keep on the safe side in doing it. The 
honour is more than the danger. ‘Here am I; take me, 
should be the Christian feeling about all such work. 

The last argument in this noble summary of motives 
for self-sacrifice for others’ good is the thought of God’s 
purpose in giving Esther her position. It carries large 
truth applicable to us all. The source of all endow- 
ments of position, possessions, or capacities, is God. 
His purpose in them all goes far beyond the happiness 
of the receiver. Dignities and gifts of every sort are 
ours for use in carrying out His great designs of good 
to our fellows. Esther was made queen, not that 
she might live in luxury and be the plaything of a 
king, but that she might serve Israel. Power is duty. 
Responsibility is measured by capacity. Obligation 
attends advantages. Gifts are burdens. All men are 
stewards, and God gives His servants their ‘ talents, 
not for selfish squandering or hoarding, but to trade 
with, and to pay the profits to Him. This penetrating 
insight into the source and intention of all which we 
have, carries a solemn lesson for us all. 

The fair young heroine’s soul rose to the occasion, 
and responded with a swift determination to her older 
cousin’s lofty words. Her pathetic request for the 


vs. 10-17] ESTHER’S VENTURE 13 


prayers of the people for whose sake she was facing 
death was surely more than superstition. Little as 
she says about her faith in God, it obviously underlay 
her courage. A soul that dares death in obedience to 
His will and in dependence on His aid, demonstrates 
its godliness more forcibly in silence than by many 
professions. 

‘If I perish, I perish!’ Think of the fair, soft lips set 
to utter that grand surrender, and of all the flowery 
and silken cords which bound the young heart to life, 
so bright and desirable as was assured to her. Note 
the resolute calmness, the Spartan brevity, the clear 
sight of the possible fatal issue, the absolute sub- 
mission. No higher strain has ever come from human 
lips. This womanly soul was of the same stock as a 
Miriam, a Deborah, Jephthah’s daughter; and the 
same fire burned in her,—utter devotion to Israel 
because entire consecration to Israel’s God. Religion 
and patriotism were to her inseparable. What was 
her individual life compared with her people’s weal 
and her God’s will? She was ready without a murmur 
to lay her young radiant life down. Such ecstasy of 
willing self-sacrifice raises its subject above all fears 
and dissolves all hindrances. It may be wrought out 
in uneventful details of our small lives, and may 
illuminate these as truly as it sheds imperishable 
lustre over the lovely figure standing in the palace 
court, and waiting for life or death at the will of a 
sensual tyrant. 

The scene there need not detain us. We can fancy 
Esther's beating heart putting fire in her cheek, and 
her subdued excitement making her beauty more 
splendid as she stood. What a contrast between her 
and the arrogant king on his throne! He was a 





14 THE BOOK OF ESTHER _ (ca.1v. 


voluptuary, ruined morally by unchecked licence,—a 
monster, as he could hardly help being, of lust, self- 
will,and caprice. She was at that moment an incarna- 
tion of. self-sacrifice and pure enthusiasm. The blind 
world thought that he was the greater; but how 
ludicrous his condescension, how vulgar his pomp, how 
coarse his kindness, how gross his prodigal promises by 
the side of the heroine of faith, whose life he held in 
his capricious hand! 

How amazed the king would have been if he had 
been told that one of his chief titles to be remembered 
would be that moment’s interview! Ahasuerus is the 
type of swollen self-indulgence, which always degrades 
and coarsens; Esther is the type of self-sacrifice which 
as uniformly refines, elevates, and arrays with new 
beauty and power. If we would reach the highest 
nobleness possible to us, we must stand with Esther at 
the gate, and not envy or imitate Ahasuerus on his 
gaudy throne. ‘He that loveth his life shall lose it; 
and he that loseth his life for My sake and the gospel’s, 
the same shall find it.’ 


MORDECAI AND ESTHER 


‘For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlarge- 
ment and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy 
father’s house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to 
the kingdom for such a time as this ?’— ESTHER iv. 14. 

ALL Christians are agreed in holding the principles 
which underlie our missionary operations. They all 
believe that the world is a fallen world, that without 
Christ the fallen world is a lost world, that the preach- 


ing of the Gospel is the way to bring Christ to those 





v. 14] MORDECAI AND ESTHER 15 


who need Him, that to the Church is committed the 
ministry of reconciliation. 

These are the grand truths from which the grand 
missionary enterprise has sprung. It is not my in- 
tention to enlarge on them now. But in this and in all 
cases, there are secondary motives besides, and inferior 
to those which are derived from the real fundamental 
principles. We are stimulated to action not only 
because we hold certain great principles, but because 
they are reinforced by certain subordinate considera- 
tions. 

It is the duty of all Christians to promote the mis- 
sionary cause on the lofty grounds already referred to. 
Besides that, it may be in a special way our duty for 
some additional reasons drawn from peculiarities in 
our condition. Circumstances do not make duties, but 
they may bring a special weight of obligation on us to 
do them. Times again do not make duties, but they 
too make a thing a special duty now. The considera- 
tion of consequences may not decide us in matters of 
conscience, but it may allowably come in to deter us 
from what is on higher grounds a sin to be avoided, or 
a good deed to be done. Success or failure is an alter- 
native that must not be thought of when we are asking 
ourselves, ‘Ought I to do this?’ but when we have 
answered that question, we may go to work with a 
lighter heart and a firmer hand if we are sure that we 
are not going to fail. 

All these are inferior considerations which do not 
avail to determine duty and do not go deep enough to 
constitute the real foundation of our obligation. They 
are considerations which can scarcely be shut out, and 
should be taken in in determining the weight of our 
obligation, in shaping the selection of our duties, in 


VAE 


4 


16 THE BOOK OF ESTHER _ (en. ry. 


stimulating the zeal and sedulousness with which we 
do what we know to be right. 

To a consideration of some of these secondary reasons 
for energy in the work of missions I ask your atten- 
tion. The verse which I have selected for my text is 
spoken by Mordecai to Esther, when urging her to her 
perilous patriotism. It singularly blends the statesman 
and the believer. He sees that if she selfishly refuses 
to identify herself with her people, in their calamity, 
the wave that sweeps them away will not be stayed 
outside her royal dwelling; he knows too much of 
courts to think that she can stand against that burst 
of popular fury should it break out. But he looks on as 
a devout man believing God’s promises, and seeing past 
all instruments; he warns her that ‘deliverance and en- 
largement shall arise.’ He is no fatalist; he believes 
in man’s work, therefore he urges her to let herself be 
the instrument by which God’s work shall be done. He 
is no atheist; he believes in God’s sovereign power and 
unchangeable faithfulness, therefore he looks without 
dismay to the possibility of her failure. He knows 
that if she is idle, all the evil will come on her head, 
who has been unfaithful, and that in spite of that 
God’s faithfulness shall not be made of none effect. 
He believes that she has been raised to her position for 
God’s sake, for her brethren’s sake, not her own. 

‘Who knoweth whether thou art come to the king- 
dom for such a time as this?’ There speaks the devout 
statesman, the court-experienced believer. He hasseen 
favourites tended and tossed aside, viziers powerful and 
beheaded, kings half deified and deserted in their utmost 
need. Sitting at the gate there, he has seen genera- 
tions of Hamans go out and in; he has seen the craft, 
the cruelty, the lusts which have been the apparent 


. 
> >» 
nA 


+ 


i 


i 


ee 


v. 14] MORDECAI AND ESTHER 17 


causes of the puppets’ rise and fall, and he has looked 
beyond it all and believed in a Hand that pulled the 
wires, in a King of Kings who raiseth up one and set- 
teth down another. So he believes that his Esther has 
come to the kingdom by God’s appointment, to do God’s 
work at God’s time. And these convictions keep him 
calm and stir her. 

We may find here a series of considerations having a 
special bearing on this missionary work. To them I 
ask your attention. 

I. God gives us our position that we may use it for 
His cause, for the spread of the Gospel. 

In most general terms. 

(a) No man has anything for his own sake—no man 
liveth to himself. We come to the kingdom for 
others. Here we touch the foundation of all authority : 
we learn the awful burden of all talents, the dreadful 
weight of every gift. 

(6b) No man receives the Gospel for his own sake. We 
are not non-conductors, but stand all linked hand in 
hand. We are members of the body that the blood 


may flow freely through us. For no loftier reason did 


God light the candle than that it might give light. We 
are beacons kindled to transmit, till every sister height 
flashes back the ray. 

(c) We especially have received a position in the 
world for the conversion of the world. Our national 
character and position unite that of the Jew in his two 
stages—we are set to be the ‘light of the world, and 
we are ‘tribes of the wandering foot.’ Our history, all, 
has tended to this function, our local position, our laws, 
our commerce. We are citizens of a nation which ‘as 
a nest has found the riches’ of the peoples. In every 
land our people dwell. 

B 





18 THE BOOK OF ESTHER | [cen.v. ~ 


Think of our colonies. Think that we are brought 
into contact with heathen, whether we will or not. 
We cannot help influencing them. ‘Through you the 
name of God is blasphemed amongst the Gentiles.’ 
Think of our sailors. Why this position? What is 
plainer than that all this is in order that the Gospel 
might be spread? God has ever let the Gospel follow 
in the tracks made for it by commercial law. 

This object does not exclude others. Our language, 
our literature, our other rich spiritual treasures, we 
hold them all that we may impart. But remember 
that all these other good things that England has will 
spread themselves with little effort, people will be glad 
to get them. But the Gospel will not be spread so. It 
must be taken to those who do not want it. It must 
be held forth with outstretched hands to ‘a disobedient 
and gainsaying people.’ It is found of them that seek 
it not. 

Like the Lord we must go to the wanderers, we must 
find them as they lie panting and thirsty in the wild 
wilderness. Therefore Christian men must make 
special earnest efforts or the work will not be done. 
They must be as the ‘dew that tarrieth not for Bs 
nor waiteth for the sons of men.’ 

And again, such action does not involve approval of 
the means by which such a position has become ours. 
‘Mordecai knew what vile passions had been at work to 
put Esther there, and did not forget poor Vashti, and 
we have no need to hide conviction that England's 
place has often been won by wrong, been kept by 
violence and fraud, that, as she has strode to empire, 
her foot has trodden on many a venerable throne un- 
justly thrown down, and her skirts have been dabbled 
with ‘the blood of poor innocents, splashed there with 


v. 14] MORDECAI AND ESTHER 19 


her armed hoof. Be it so!—Still! ‘Thou makest the 
wrath of man to praise Thee. Still—‘we are debtors 
both to the Greek and barbarian,’ and all the more 
debtors because of ills inflicted. God has laid on us 
a solemn responsibility. Over all the dust of base 
intrigues, and the smoke of bloody battles, and the 
’ hubbub of busy commerce, His hand has been working, 
and though we have been sinful, He has given us a 
place and a power, mighty and awful. We have 
received these not for our own glory, not that we 
should boast of our dominion, not that we should 
gather tribute of gain and glory from subject peoples, 
not even that we should carry to them the great though 
lesser blessings of language, united order, peaceful com- 
merce, sway over brute nature, but that we should give 
them what will make them men—Christ. 

We have a work to do, an awful work. To us all as 
Christians, to us especially as citizens of this land and 
members of this race, to us and to our brethren across 
the Atlantic the message comes, by our history, our 
manners, etc., as plainly as if it were written in every 
wave that beats around our coast. ‘Ye are my 
witnesses, saith the Lord.’ 

II. God lays upon us special missionary work by the 
special characteristics of the times. 

‘Such a time as this!’ Was there ever such a time? . 

Look at the condition of heathenism. It is every- 
where tottering. ‘The idols are on the beasts, Bel 
boweth down. The grim gods sit half famished 
already. There is a crack in every temple wall. 
Mahommedanism, Buddhism, Brahminism — they are 
none of them progressive. They are none of them 
vital. Think how only the Gospel outleaps space and 
time. How all these systems are of time and devoured 





20 THE BOOK OF ESTHER _ {cn 1v._ 


by it, as Saturn eats his own children. They are of 
the things that can be shaken, and their being shaken 
makes more certain the remaining of the things that 
cannot be shaken. 

Look at the fields open. India, China, Japan, 
Africa, in a word, ‘The field is the world’ in a degree 
in which it never was before. ‘Such a time’—a time 
of seething, and we can determine the cosmos; a plastic 
time, and we can mould it; it is a deluge, push the ark 
boldly out and ransom some. 

III. If we neglect the voice of God’s providence, harm 
comes on us. 

The gifts unimproved are apt to be lost. One knows 
not all the conditions on which England holds her 
sway, nor do we fathom the strange way in which 
spiritual characteristics are inwrought with material 
interests. But we believe in a providential govern- 
ment of the world, and of this we may be very sure, 
that all advantages not used for God are held bya very 
precarious tenure. 

The fact is that selfishness is the ruin of any people. 
When you have a ‘Christian’ nation not using their 
position for God’s glory, they are using it for their own 
sakes; and that indicates a state of mind which will 
lead to numberless other evils in their relation to men, 
many of which have a direct tendency to rob them of 
their advantages. For instance, a selfish nation will 
never hold conquests with a firm grasp. If we do not 
bind subject peoples to us by benefits, we shall repel 
them by hatreds. Think of India and its lessons, or of 
South Africa and its. We have seen the tide of material 
prosperity ebb away from many a nation and land, and 
I for my part believe in the Hand of God in history, and 
believe that the tide follows the motions of the heavens. 


ca oe. 


v. 14] MORDECAI AND ESTHER 21 


The history of the Jewish people is not an exception 
to the laws of God’s government of the world, but a 
specimen of it. They who were made a hearth in 
which the embers of divine truth were kept in a dark 


_world, when they began to think that they had the 


truth in order that they might be different from other 
people, and forgot that they were different from others 


_ in order that they might first preserve and then impart 


the truth to all, lost the light and heat of it, stiffened 
into formal hypocrisy and malice and all uncharitable- 
ness, and then the Roman sword smote their national 
life in twain. 

Whatever is not used for God becomes a snare first, 
then injures the possessors, and tends to destroy the 
possessors. The march of Providence goes on. Its 
purposes will be effected. Whatever stands in the 
way will be mowed remorselessly down, if need be. 
Helps that have become hindrances will go. The 
kingdoms of this world will have to fall; and if we 
are not helping and hasting the coming of the Lord 
we shall be destroyed by the brightness of His coming. 
The chariot rolls on. For men and for nations there is 
only the choice of yoking themselves to the car, and 
finding themselves borne along rather than bearing 
it, and partaking the triumph, or of being crushed 
beneath its awful wheels as they bound along their 
certain road, bearing Him who rides ‘forth prosper- 
ously because of truth and meekness and righteousness.’ 

IV. Though we be unfaithful, God’s purpose of mercy 
to the world shall be accomplished. 

‘Deliverance and enlargement shall arise from 
another place. So it is certain that God from eter- 
nity has willed that all flesh should see His salvation. 
He loves the heathen better than we do. Christ has 





22 THE BOOK OF ESTHER  [en.wv. © 


died not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole 
world. God hath made of one blood all nations of 
men. The race is one in its need. The race is one in 
its goal. The Gospel is fit for all men. The Gospel is 
preached to all men. The Gospel shall yet be received 
by a world, and from every corner of a believing earth 
will rise one roll of praise to one Father, and the race 
shall be one in its hopes, one in its Lord, one in faith, 
one in baptism, one in one God and Father of us all. — 
That grand unity shall certainly come. That true 
unity and fraternity shall be realised. The blissful 
wave of the knowledge of the Lord shall cover and 
hide and flow rejoicingly over all national distinctions. 
‘In that day Israel shall be the third with Egypt and 
with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth.’ 

This is as certain as the efficacy of a Saviour’s blood 
can make it, as certain as the universal adaptation and 
design of a preached Gospel can make it, as certain as 
the oneness of human nature can make it, as certain 
as the power of a Comforter who shall convince the 
world of sin, of righteousness, and judgment can make 
it, as certain as the misery of man can make it, as 
certain as the promises of God who cannot lie can 
make it, as certain as His faithfulness who hangs the 
rainbow in the heavens and enters into an everlasting 
covenant with all the earth can make it. 

And this accumulation of certainties does not depend 
on the faithfulness of men. In the width of that 
mighty result the failure of some single agent may be 
eliminated. Nay, more, though all men failed, God 
hath instruments, and will use them Himself, if need 
were. . 

Only we may share the triumph and partake of the 
blessed result. Decide for yourself, what share you will 


ee ee 


v. 14] THE NET BROKEN 23 


have in that marvellous day. Let your work be such 
as that it shall abide. Stonehenge, cathedrals, temples 
stand when all else has passed away. Work for God 
abides and outlasts everything beside, and the smallest 
service for Him is only made to flash forth light by the 
glorifying and revealing fires of that awful day which 
will burn up the wood, the hay, and the stubble, and 
flow with beautifying brightness and be flashed back 
with double splendour from ‘the gold, the silver, and 
the precious stones, the abiding workmanship of devout 
hearts in that everlasting tabernacle which shall not 
be taken down, the ransomed souls builded together, 
ransomed by our preaching, and ‘builded up together for 
a temple of God by the Spirit.’ 


THE NET BROKEN 


‘And Esther spake yet again before the king, and fell down at his feet, and 
besought him with tears to put away the mischief of Haman the Agagite, and his 
device that he had devised against the Jews. 4. Then the king held outthe golden 
sceptre toward Esther. So Esther arose, and stood before the king, 5. And said, 
If it please the king, and if I have found favour in his sight, and the thing seem 
right before the king, and I be pleasing in his eyes, let it be written to reverse the 
letters devised by Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, which he wrote to 
destroy the Jews which are in all the king’s provinces: 6. For how can I endure to 
see the evil that shall come unto my people? or how can I endure to see the 
destruction of my kindred? 7. Then the king Ahasuerus said unto Esther the 
queen, and to Mordecai the Jew, Behold, I have given Esther the house of Haman, 
and him they have hanged upon the gallows, because he laid his hand upon the 
Jews. 8. Write ye also for the Jews, as it liketh you, in the king’s name, and seal 
it with the king’s ring: for the writing which is written in the king’s name, and 
sealed with the king’s ring, may no man reverse. 15. And Mordecai went out from 
the presence of the king in royal apparel of blue and white, and with a great crown 
of gold, and with a garment of fine linen and purple: and the city of Shushan 
rejoiced and was glad. 16. The Jews had light, and gladness, and joy, and honour. 
17. And in every province, and in every city, whithersoever the king’s command- 
ment and his decree came, the Jews had joy and gladness, a feast and a good day. 
And many of the people of the land became Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell 
upon them.’—ESTHER viii. 3-8, 15-17. 


THE spirit of this passage may perhaps be best caught 
by taking the three persons appearing in it, and the 
One who does not appear, but acts unseen through 
them all. 


24 THE BOOK OF ESTHER (ca. vin. 


I. The heroine of the whole book and of this chapter 
is Esther, one of the sweetest and noblest of the women 
of Scripture. The orphan girl who had grown up into 
beauty under the care of her uncle Mordecai, and was 
lifted suddenly from sheltered obscurity into the ‘fierce 
light that beats upon a throne,’ like some flower culled 
in a shady nook and set in a king’s bosom, was true to 
her childhood’s protector and to her people, and kept 
her sweet, brave gentleness unspoiled by the rapid ele- 
vation which ruins so many characters. Her Jewish 
name of Hadassah (‘ myrtle’) well befits her, for she is 
clothed with unostentatious beauty, pure and fragrant 
as the blossoms that brides twine in their hair. But, 
withal, she has a true woman’s courage which is always 
ready to endure any evil and dare any danger at the 
bidding of her heart. She took her life in her hand 
when she sought an audience of Ahasuerus uninvited, 
and she knew that she did. Nothing in literature is 
nobler than her quiet words, which measure her danger 
without shrinking, and front it without heroics: ‘IfI 
perish, I perish !’ 

The danger was not past, though she was queen and 
beloved; for a despot’s love is a shifting sand-bank, 
which may yield anchorage to-day, and to-morrow may 
be washed away. So she counted not her life dear unto 
herself when, for the second time, as in our passage, she 
ventured, uninvited, into the king’s presence. The 
womanly courage that risks life for love’s sake is 
nobler than the soldier’s that feels the lust of battle 
maddening him. 

Esther’s words to the king are full of tact. She 
begins with what seems to have been the form of 
address prescribed by custom, for it is used by her in 
her former requests (chap. v. 8; vii. 3). But she adds a 


ve. 3-8, 15-17] THE NET BROKEN 25 


variation of the formula, tinged with more personal 
reference to the king’s feeling towards her, as well as 
breathing entire submission to his estimate of what 
was fitting. ‘If the thing seem right before the king, 
appeals to the sense of justice that lay dormant beneath 
the monarch’s arbitrary will; ‘and I be pleasing in his 
eyes, drew him by the charm of her beauty. She 
avoided making the king responsible for the plot, and 
laid it at the door of the dead and discredited Haman. 
It was his device, and since he had fallen, his policy 
could be reversed without hurting the king’s dignity. 
And then with fine tact, as well as with a burst of 
genuine feeling, she flings all her personal influence 
into the scale, and seeks to move the king, not by 
appeals to his justice or royal duty, but to his love for 
her, which surely could not bear to see her suffer. One 
may say that it was a low motive to appeal to, to ask 
the despot to save a people in order to keep one woman 
from sorrow; and soit was. It was Ahasuerus’s fault 
that such a reason had more weight with him than 
nobler ones. It was not Esther's that she used her 
power over him to carry her point. She used the 
weapons that she had, and that she knew would be 
efficacious. The purpose for which she used them is 
her justification. 

Esther may well teach her sisters to-day to be brave 
and gentle, to use their influence over men for high 
purposes of public good, to be the inspirers of their 
husbands, lovers, brothers, for all noble thinking and 
doing; to make the cause of the oppressed their own, 
to be the apostles of mercy and the hinderers of wrong, 
to keep true to their early associations if prosperity 
comes to them, and to cherish sympathy with their 
nation so deep that they cannot ‘endure to see the evil 





26 THE BOOK OF ESTHER [cx. vut 


that shall come unto them’ without using all their 
womanly influence to avert it. 

II. Ahasuerus plays a sorry, part beside Esther. He 
knows no law but his own will, and that is moved, not 
by conscience or reason, but by ignoble passions and 
sensual desires. He tosses his subjects’ lives as trivial 
gifts to any who ask for them. Haman’s wife knew 
that he had only to ‘speak to the king,’ and Mordecai 
would be hanged; Haman had no difficulty in securing 
the royal mandate for the murder of all the Jews. 
Sated with the indulgence of low de.ires, he let all 
power slip from his idle hands, and his manhood was 
rotted away by wallowing in the pigsty of voluptu- 
ousness. But he was tenacious of the semblance of 
authority, and demanded the appearance of abject 
submission from the ‘servants’ who were his masters. 
He yielded to Esther's prayer as lightly as to Haman’s 
plot. Whether the Jews were wiped out or not 
mattered nothing to him, so long as he had no trouble 
in the affair. 

To shift all responsibility off his own shoulders on to 
somebody else’s was his one aim. He was as untrue to 
his duty when he gave his signet to Mordecai, and bade 
him and Esther do as they liked, as when he had given 
it to Haman. And with all this slothful indifference to 
his duty, he was sensitive to etiquette, and its cobwebs 
held him whom the cords of his royal obligations could — 
not hold. It mattered not to him that the edict which 
he allowed Mordecai to promulgate practically lit the 
flames of civil war. He had washed his hands of the 
whole business. 

It is a hideous picture of an Eastern despot, and has 
been said to be unhistorical and unbelievable. But 
the world has seen many examples of rulers whom the 


vs. 3-8, 15-17] THE NET BROKEN 27 


possession of unlimited and irresponsible power has 
corrupted in like fashion. And others than rulers may 
take the warning that to live to self is the mother of 
all sins and crimes; that no man can safely make his 
own will and his own passions his guides; that there is 
no slavery so abject as that of the man who is tyran- 
nised by his lower nature; that there is a temptation 
besetting us all to take the advantages and neglect the 
duties of our position, and that to yield to it is sure to 
end in moral ruin. We are all kings, even if our king- 
dom be only our own selves, and we shall rule wisely 
only if we rule as God’s viceroys, and think more of 
duty than of delight. 

III. Mordecai is a kind of duplicate of Joseph, and 
embodies valuable lessons. Contented acceptance of 
obscurity and neglect of his services, faithfulness to 
his people and his God in the foul atmosphere of such 
a court, wise reticence, patient discharge of small 
duties, undoubting hope when things looked blackest 
fed by stedfast faith in God, unchangedness of character 
and purpose when lifted to supreme dignity, the use of 
influence and place, not for himself, but for his people, 
—all these are traits which may be imitated in any life. 
We should be the same men, whéther we sit unnoticed 
among the lackeys at the gate, or are bearing the brunt 
of the hatred of powerful foes, or are clothed ‘in royal 
apparel of blue and white, and with a great crown of 
gold. These gauds were nothing to Mordecai, and 
earthly honours should never turn our heads. He 
valued power because it enabled him to save his 
brethren, and we should cultivate the same spirit. The 
political world, with its fierce struggles for personal 
ends, its often disregard of the public good, and its use 
of place and power for ‘making a pile’ or helping rela- 





28 THE BOOK OF ESTHER [ca. vim. 


tions up, would be much the better for some infusion 
of the spirit of Mordecai. 

IV. But we must not look only at the visible persons 
and forces. This book of Esther does not say much 
about God, but His presence broods over it all, and is 
the real spring that moves the movers that are seen. 
It is all a lesson of how God works out His purposes 
through men that seem to themselves to be working 
out theirs. The king’s criminal abandonment to lust 
and luxury, Haman’s meanly personal pique, Esther's’ 
beauty, the fall of the favourite, the long past services 
of Mordecai, even the king’s sleepless night, are all 
threads in the web, and God is the weaver. The story 
raises the whole question of the standing miracle of 
the co-existence and co-operation of the divine and the 
human. Man is free and responsible, God is sovereign 
and all-pervading. He ‘makes the wrath of man to 
praise Him, and with the remainder thereof He girdeth 
Himself.’ To-day, as then, He is working out His deep 
designs through men whom He has raised up, though 
they have not known Him. Amid the clash of con- 
tending interests and worldly passions His solemn 
purpose steadily advances to its end, like the irresist- 
ible ocean current, which persists through all storms 
that agitate the surface, and draws them into the drift 
of its silent trend. Ahasuerus, Haman, Esther, Mor- 
decai, are His instruments, and yet each of them is the 
doer of his or her deed, and has to answer to Him for it. 


THE BOOK OF JOB 


SORROW THAT WORSHIPS 


‘Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the 
Lord gave, andthe Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’— 
Jon i. 21. 


THis book of Job wrestles with the problem of the 
meaning of the mystery of sorrow. Whether history 
or a parable, its worth is the same, as tortured hearts 
have felt for countless centuries, and will feel to the 
end. Perhaps no picture that was ever painted is 
‘grander and more touching than that of the man of 
Uz, in the antique wealth and happiness of his brighter 
days, rich, joyful, with his children round him, living in 
men’s honour, and walking upright before God. Then 
come the dramatic completeness and suddenness of 
his great trials. One day strips him of all, and 
stripped of all he rises to a loftier dignity, for there 
is a majesty as well as an isolation in his sorrow. 

How many spirits tossed by afflictions have found 
peace in these words! How many quivering lips have 
tried to utter their grave, calm accents! To how many 
of us are they hallowed by memories of times when 
they stood between us and despair! 

They seem to me to say everything that can be said 
about our tria’s and losses, to set forth the whole truth 
of the facts, and ‘to present the whole series of feelings 
with which good men mey and should be exercised. 


I. The vindication of sorrow. 
29 


pies te 
NS os 


30 THE BOOK OF JOB (ou. 1. 


He ‘rent his clothes ’—the signs and tokens of inward 
desolation and loss. 

It is worth our while to stay for one moment with 
the thought that we are meant to feel grief. God 
sends sorrows in order that they may pain. Sorrow 
has its manifold uses in our lives and on our hearts. 
It is natural. That is enough. God set the fountain 
of tears in our souls. We are bidden not to ‘despise 
the chastening of the Lord. It is they who are 
‘exercised’ thereby to whom the chastisement is 
blessed. 

It is sanctioned by Christ. He wept. He bade the 
women of Jerusalem weep for themselves and for 
their children. 

Religion does not destroy the natural emotions— 
sorrow as little asany other. It guides, controls, curbs, 
comforts, and brings blessings out of it. So do not 
aim at an impossible stoicism, but permit nature to 
have its way, and look at the picture of this manly 
sorrow of Job’s—calm, silent, unless when stung by 
the undeserved reproaches of these three ‘orthodox 
liars for God, and going to God and worshipping. 

II. The recognition of loss and sorrow as the law 
of life. 

‘Naked came I out of my mother’s womb,’ 

We need not dwell on the figure ‘ mother,’ suggesting 
the grave as the kindly mother’s bosom that gathers 
us all in, and the thought that perhaps gleams forth 
that death, too, is a kind of birth. 

But the truth picturesquely set forth is ai the old 
and simple one—that all possessions are transient. 

The naked self gets clothed and lapped round with 
possessions, but they are all outside of it, apart from 
its individuality. It has been without them. It will 


v.21] SORROW THAT WORSHIPS 31 


be without them. Death at the end will rob us of 
them all. 

The inevitable law of loss is fixed and certain. We 
are losing something every moment—not only posses- 
sions, but all our dearest ties are knit but for a time, 
and sure to be snapped. They go, and then after a 
while we go. 

The independence of each soul of all its possessions 
and relations is as certain as the loss of them. They 
may goand we are made naked, but still we exist all the 
same. We have to learn the hard lesson which sounds 
so unfeeling, that we can live on in spite of all losses. 
Nothing, no one, is necessary to us. 

All this is very cold and miserable; it is the standing 
point of law and necessity. An atheist could say it. 
It is the beginning of the Christian contemplation of 
life, but only the beginning. 

III. The recognition of God in the law. 

‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.’ 
That isa step far beyond the former. To bring in the 
thought of the Lord makes a world of difference. 

The tendency is to look only at the second cause. 
In Job’s case there were two classes of agencies, men, 
Chaldeans and Sabeans, and natural causes, fire and 
wind, but he did not stop with these. 

The grand corrective of that tendency lies in the 
full theistic idea, that God is the sole cause of all. The 
immanence of Deity in all things and events is our 
refuge from the soul-crushing tyranny of the reign 
oflaw. ~- 

That devous recognition of God in law is eminently 
to be made in regard to death, as Job does in the 
text: ‘The number of his months is with Thee. 
Death is not any mor? nor any less under His control 








32 THE BOOK OF JOB ~ [ont 


than all other human incidents are. It has no special — 


sanctity, nor abnormally close connection with His will, 
but it no more is exempt from such connection than 
all the other events of life. The connection is real. 
He opens the gate of the grave and no man shuts. 
He shuts, and no man opens. 

Job did not forget the Lord’s gifts even while he was 
writhing under the stroke of His withdrawings. Alas! 
that it should so often need sorrow to bear into our 
hearts that we owe all to Him, but even then, if not 
before, it is well to remember how much good we have 
received of the Lord, and the remembrance should not 
be ‘a sorrow’s crown of sorrow, but a thankful one. 

IV. The thankful resignation to God’s loving ad- 
ministration of the law. 

The preceding words might be said with mere sub- 
mission to an irresistible power, but this last sentence 
climbs to the highest of the true Christian idea. It 
recognises in loss and sorrow a reason for praise. 

Why? 

Because we may be sure that all loss is for our good. 

Because we may be sure that all loss is from a loving 
God. In loss of dear ones, owr gain is in drawing 
nearer to God, in being taught more to long for 
heaven. In our relation to them, a loftier love, a 
hallewing of all the past. Their gain is in their 
entrance ‘o heaven, and all the glory that they have 
reached. 

This blessing of God for loss is not inconsistent with 
sorrow, but anticipates the future when we. / all kuow 
all and bless Him 1>*, all. 


0 


THE PEACEABLE FRUITS OF SORROWS 
RIGHTLY BORNE 


‘Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou 
the chastening of the Almighty: 18. For He maketh sore, and bindeth up: He 
woundeth, and His hands make whole. 19. He shall deliver thee in six troubles: 
yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. 20. In famine He shall redeem thee 
from death: and in war from the power of the sword. 21. Thou shalt be hid from 
the scourge of the tongue: neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it 
cometh. 22, At destruction and famine thou shalt laugh: neither shalt thou be 
afraid of the beasts of the earth. 23. For thou shalt be in league with the stones 
of the field: and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee. 24. And thou 
shalt know that thy tabernacle shall be in peace; and thou shalt visit thy habita- 
tion, and shalt not sin. 25. Thou shalt know also that thy seed shall be great, and 
thine offspring as the grass of the earth. 26. Thou shalt come to thy grave ina 
full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season. 27. Lo this, we have 
searched it, soitis; hear it, and know thou it for thy good.’—JoB v. 17-27. 


| THE close of the Book of Job shows that his friends’ 


speeches were defective, and in part erroneous. They 
all proceeded on the assumption that suffering was 
the fruit of sin—a principle which, though true in 
general, is not to be unconditionally applied to specific 
eases. They all forgot that good men might be ex- 
posed to it, not as punishment, nor even as correction, 
but as trial, to ‘know what was in their hearts.’ 

Eliphaz is the best of the three friends, and his 
speeches embody much permanent truth, and rise, as 
in this passage, to a high level of literary and artistic 
beauty. There are few lovelier passages in Scripture 
than this glowing description of the prosperity of the 
man who accepts God's chastisements; and, on the 
whole, the picture is true. But the underlying belief 
in the uniform coincidence of inward goodness and 
outward good needs to be modified by the deeper 
teaching of the New Testament before it can be re- 
garded as covering all the facts of life. 

Eliphaz is gathering up, in our passage, the threads 
of his speech. He bases upon all that he has been 

c 





34 THE BOOK OF JOB [CH. v. 


saying the exhortation to Job to be thankful for his 
sorrows. With a grand paradox, he declares the man 
who is afflicted to be happy. And therein he strikes 
an eternally true note. It is good to be made to drink 
a cup of sorrow. Flesh calls pain evil, but spirit knows 
it to be good. The list of our blessings is not only 


written in bright inks, but many are inscribed in 


black. And the reason why the sad heart should be 
a happy heart is because, as Eliphaz believed, sadness 
is God’s fatherly correction, intended to better the 
subject of it. ‘Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, 
says the Epistle to the Hebrews, in full accord with 
Eliphaz. 

But his well-meant and true words flew wide of their 
mark, for two reasons. They were chillingly didactic, 
and it is vinegar upon nitre to stand over an agonised 
soul and preach platitudes in an unsympathetic voice. 
And they assumed unusual sin in Job as the explana- 
tion of his unparalleled pains, while the prologue tells 
us that his sufferings were not fruits of his sin, but 
trials of his righteousness. He was horrified at Job's 
words, which seemed to him full of rebellion and 
irreverence; and he made no allowance for the wild 
cries of an agonised heart when he solemnly warned 
the sufferer against ‘despising’ God’s chastening. -A 
more sympathetic ear would have detected the accent 
of faith in the groans. 

The collocation, in verse 18, of making sore and bind- 
ing up, does not merely express sequence, but also 
purpose. The wounding is in order to healing. The 
wounds are merciful surgery; and their intention is 
health, like the cuts that lay open an ulcer, or the 
scratches for vaccination. The view of suffering in 
these two verses is not complete, but it goes far 


——-——- 


eS ee ee 


vs. 17-27] FRUITS OF SORROWS 35 


toward completeness in tracing it to God, in assert- 
ing its disciplinary intention, in pointing to the divine 
healing which is meant to follow, and in exhorting to 
submission. We may recall the beautiful expansion of 
that exhortation in Hebrews, where ‘faint not’ is added 
to ‘despise not,’ so including the two opposite and yet 
closely connected forms of misuse of sorrow, accord- 
ing as we stiffen our wills against it, and try to make 
light of it, or yield so utterly to it as to collapse. 
Hither extreme equally misses the corrective purpose 
of the grief. 

On this general statement follows a charming 
picture of the blessedness which attends the man 
who has taken his chastisement rightly. After the 
thunderstorm come sunshine and blue, and the song 
of birds. But, lovely as it is, and capable of applica- 
tion in many points to the life of every man who 
trustfully yields to God's will, it must not be taken as 
a literally and absolutely true statement of God’s deal- 
ings with His children. If so regarded, it would hope- 
lessly be shattered against facts; for the world is full 
of instances of saintly men and women who have not 
experienced in their outward lives such sunny calm 
and prosperity stretching to old age as are here 
promised. Eliphaz is not meant to be the interpreter 
of the mysteries of Providence, and his solution is 
decisively rejected at the close. But still there is 
much in this picture which’ finds fulfilment in all 
devout lives in a higher sense than his intended 
meaning. 

The first point is that the devout soul is exempt from 
calamities which assail those around it. These are such 
as are ordinarily in Scripture recognised as God’s judg- 
ments upon a people. Famine and war devastate, but 





36 THE BOOK OF JOB [cH. Vv. 


the devout soul abides in peace, and is satisfied. Now 
it is not true that faith and submission make a wall 
round a man, so that he escapes from such calamities. 
In the supernatural system of the Old Testament such 
exemptions were more usual than with us, though this 
very Book of Job and many a psalm show that devout 
hearts had even then to wrestle with the problem of 
the prosperity of the wicked and the indiscriminate 
fall of widespread calamities on the good and bad. 

But in its deepest sense (which, however, is not 
Eliphaz’s sense) the faithful man is saved from the 
evils which he, in common with his faithless neigh- 
bour, experiences. Two men are smitten down by the 
same disease, or lie dying on’a battlefield, shattered 
by the same shell, and the one receives the fulfilment 
of the promise, ‘there shall no evil touch thee,’ and 
the other does not. For the evil in the evil is all 
sucked out of it, and the poison is wiped off the arrow 


which strikes him who is united to God by faith and > 


submission. Two women are grinding at the same 
millstone, and the same blow kills them both; but the 
one is delivered, and the other is not. They who pass 
through an evil, and are not drawn away from God by 


it, but brought nearer to Him, are hid from its power.. 


To die may be our deliverance from death. 

Eliphaz’s promises rise still higher in verses 22 and 
23, in which is set forth a truth that in its deepest 
meaning is of universal application. The wild beasts 
of the earth and the stones of the field will be in 
league with the man who submits to God’s will. Of 


course the beasts come into view as destructive, and ~ 


the stones as injuring the fertility of the fields. There 
is, probably, allusion to the story of Paradise and the 
Fall. Man’s relation to nature was disturbed by sin; 


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vs. 17-27] FRUITS OF SORROWS 37 


it will be rectified by his return to God. Such a 
doctrine of the effects of sin in perverting man’s rela- 
tion to creatures runs all through Scripture, and is not 
to be put aside as mere symbolism. 

But the large truth underlying the words here is 
that, if we are servants of God, we are masters of 
everything. ‘All things work together for good to 
them that love God.’ All things serve the soul that 
serves God; as, on the other hand, all are against 
him that does not, and ‘the stars in their courses 
fight against’ those who fight against Him. All things 
are ours, if we are Christ's. The many medizval 
legends of saints attended by animals, from St. Jerome 
and his lion downwards to St. Francis preaching to 
the birds, echo the thoughts here. A gentle, pure soul, 
living in amity with dumb creatures, has wonderful 
power to attract them. They who are at peace with 
God can scarcely be at war with any of God’s creatures. 
Gentleness is stronger than iron bands. ‘Cords of 
love’ draw most surely. 

Peace and prosperity in home and possessions are 
the next blessings promised (ver. 24). ‘Thou shalt visit 
[look over| thy household, and shalt miss nothing.’ 
No cattle have strayed or been devoured by evil beasts, 
or stolen, as all Job’s had been. Alas! Eliphaz knew 
nothing about commercial crises, and the great system 
of credit by which one scoundrel’s fall may bring down 
hundreds of good men and patient widows, who look 
over their possessions and find nothing but worthless 
shares. Yet even for those who find all at once that 
the herd is cut off from the stall, their tabernacle 
may still be in peace, and though the fold be empty 
they may miss nothing, if in the empty place they 
find God. That is what Christians may make out of 





38 THE BOOK OF JOB (cH. Vv. 


the words; but it is not what was originally meant 
by them. 

In like manner the next blessing, that of a numerous 
posterity, does not depend on moral or religious con- 
dition, as Eliphaz would make out, and in modern 
days is not always regarded as a blessing. But note 
the singular heartlessness betrayed in telling Job, all 
whose flocks and herds had been carried off, and his 
children laid dead in their festival chamber, that 
abundant possessions and offspring were the token of 
God’s favour. The speaker seems serenely unconscious 


that he was saying anything that could drive a knife 


into the tortured man. He is so carried along on the 
waves of his own eloquence, and so absorbed in string- 
ing together the elements of an artistic whole, that he 
forgets the very sorrows which he came to comfort. 
There are not a few pious exhorters of bleeding hearts 
who are chargeable with the same sin. The only hand 
that will bind up without hurting is a hand that is 
sympathetic to the finger-tips. No eloquence or poetic 
beauty or presentation of undeniable truths will do as 
substitutes for that. 

The last blessing promised is that which the Old 


Testament places so high in the list of good things— - 


long life. The lovely metaphor in which that promise 
is couched has become familiar to us all. The ripe 
corn gathered into a sheaf at harvest-time suggests 
festival rather than sadness. It speaks of growth 
accomplished, of fruit matured, of the ministries of sun 
and rain received and used, and of a joyful gathering 
into the great storehouse. There is no reference in the 
speech to the uses of the sheaf after it is harvested, 
but we can scarcely avoid following its history a little 
farther than the ‘grave’ which to Eliphaz seems the 


Ee ee ee ee 





vs. 17-27] FRUITS OF SORROWS 89 


garner. Are all these matured powers to have no 
field for action? Were all these miracles of vegeta- 
tion set in motion only in order to grow a crop which 
should be reaped, and there an end? What is to 
be done with the precious fruit which has taken so 
long time and so much cultivation to grow? Surely 
it is not the intention of the Lord of the harvest to 
let it rot when it has been gathered. Surely we are 
grown here and ripened and carried hence for some- 
thing. 

But that is not in our passage. This, however, may 
be drawn from it—that maturity does not depend 
on length of days; and, however Eliphaz meant to 
promise long life, the reality is that the devout soul 
may reckon on complete life, whether it be long or 
short. God will not call His children home till their 
schooling is done; and, however green and young the 
corn may seem to our eyes, He knows which heads in 
the great harvest-field are ready for removal, and 
gathers only these. The child whose little coffin may 
be carried under a boy’s arm may be ripe for harvest- 
ing. Not length of days, but likeness to God, makes 
maturity ; and if we die according to the will of God, 
it cannot but be that we shall come to our grave ina 
full age, whatever be the number of years carved on 
our tombstones. 

The speech ends with a somewhat self-complacent 
exhortation to the poor, tortured man: ‘We have 
searched it, soit is. We wise men pledge our wisdom 
and our reputation that thisis true. Great is authority. 
An ounce of sympathy would have done more to com- 
mend the doctrine than a ton of dogmatic self-con- 
fidence. ‘ Hear it, and know thou it for thyself.’ Take 
it into thy mind. Take it into thy mind and heart, 





40 THE BOOK OF JOB (CH. VILLI. 


and take it for thy good. It was a frosty ending, 
exasperating in its air of patronage, of superior 
wisdom, and in its lack of any note of feeling. So, 
of course, it set Job’s impatience alight, and his next 
speech is more desperate than his former. When will 
well-meaning comforters learn not to rub salt into 
wounds while they seem to be dressing them? 


TWO KINDS OF HOPE 

‘Whose hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be a spider’s web.’— 
JOB viii. 14. 

‘And hope maketh not ashamed.’—ROMANS V. 5. 
THESE two texts take opposite sides. Bildad was not 
the wisest of Job’s friends, and he gives utterance to 
solemn commonplaces with partial truth in them. In 
the rough it is true that the hope of the ungodly 
perishes, and the limits of the truth are concealed 
by the splendour of the imagery and the perfection 
of artistic form in which the well-worn platitude is 
draped. The spider’s web stretched glittering in the 
dewy morning on the plants, shaking its threaded 


tears in the wind, the flag in the dry bed of a nullah. 


withering while yet green, the wall on which leaning 


a man will fall, are vivid illustrations of hopes that 


collapse and fail. But my other text has to do with 
hopes that do not fail. Paul thinks that he knows of 
hope that maketh not ashamed, that is, which never 
disappoints. Bildad was right if he was thinking, as 
he was, of hopes fixed on earth; the Apostle was right, 
for he was thinking of hopes set on God. It is a com- 
monplace that ‘hope springs immortal in the human 
breast’; it is equally a commonplace that hopes are 


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v. 14] TWO KINDS OF HOPE 41 


disappointed. What is the conclusion from these two 
universal experiences? Is it the cynical one that it 
is all illusion, or is it that somewhere there must 
be an object on which hope may twine its tendrils 
without fear? God has given the faculty, and we may 
be sure that it is not given to be for ever balked. 
We must hope. Our hope may be our worst enemy; 
it may and should be our purest joy. 

Let us then simply consider these two sorts of hope, 
the earthly and the heavenly, in their working in the 
three great realms of life, death, and eternity. 

I. In life. 

The faculty is inseparable from man’s consciousness 
of immortality and of an indefinitely expansible nature 
which ever makes him discontented with the present. 
It has great purposes to perform in strengthening him 
for work, in helping him over sorrows, in making him 
buoyant and elastic, in painting for him the walls of 
the dungeon, and hiding for him the weight of the 
fetters. 

But for what did he receive this great gift? Mainly 
that he might pass beyond the temporal and hold 
converse with the skies. Its true sphere is the unseen 
future which is at God’s right hand. 

We may run a series of antitheses, e.g.— 

Earthly hope is so uncertain that its larger part 
is often fear. , 

Heavenly hope is fixed and sure. It is as certain as 
history. 

Earthly hope realised is always less blessed than we 
expected. How universal the experience that there 
is little to choose between a gratified and a frustrated 
hope! The wonders inside the caravan are never so 
wonderful as the canvas pictures outside. 





42 THE BOOK OF JOB __ [en. vu 


Heavenly hopes ever surpass the most rapturous 
anticipation. ‘The half hath not been told.’ 

Earthly hopes are necessarily short-winged. They 
are settled one way or another, and sink hull down 
below our horizon. 

Heavenly hope sets its object far off, and because 
a lifetime only attains it in part, it blesses a lifetime 
and outlasts it. 

II. Hope in death. 

That last hour ends for us all alike our earthly joys 
and relations. The slow years slip away, and each 
bears with it hopes that have been outlived, whether 
fulfilled or disappointed. One by one the lights that 
we kindle in our hall flicker out, and death quenches 
the last of them. But there is one light that burns 
on clear through the article of death, like the lamp 
‘in the magician’s tomb. ‘The righteous hath hope in 
his death. We can each settle for ourselves whether 
we shall carry that radiant angel with her white 
wings into the great darkness, or shall sadly part 
with her before we part with life. To the earthly 
soul that last earthly hour is a black wall beyond 
which it cannot look. To the God-trusting soul the 
darkness is peopled with bright-faced hopes. ;: 

III. Hope in eternity. 

It is not for our tongues to speak of what must, 
in the natural working out of consequences, be the 
ultimate condition of a soul which has not set its 
hopes on the God who alone is the right Object of 
the blessed but yet awful capacity of hoping, when 
all the fleeting objects which it sought as solace and 
mask of its own true poverty are clean gone from its 
grasp. Dante’s tremendous words are more than 
enough to move wholesome horror in any thinking 


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v.14] JOBS QUESTION, JESUS’ ANSWER 43 


soul: ‘Leave hope behind, all ye who enter here. 
They are said to be unfeeling, grim, and mediczval, 
incredible in this enlightened age; but is there any 
way out of them, if we take into account what our 
nature is moulded to need and cling to, and what 
‘godless’ men have done with it ? 

But let us turn to the brighter of these texts. ‘Hope 
maketh not ashamed. There will be an internal 
increase of blessedness, power, purity in that future, 
a fuller possession of God, a reaching out after com- 
pleter likeness to Him. So if we can think of days 
in that calm state where time will be no more, 
‘to-morrow shall be as this day and much more 
abundant, and the angel Hope, who kept us company 
through all the weary marches of earth, will attend 
on us still, only having laid aside the uncertainty that 
sometime veiled her smiles, but retaining all the 
buoyant eagerness for the ever unfolding wonders. 
which gave us courage and cheer in the days of our 
flesh. 


JOBS QUESTION, JESUS’ ANSWER 


‘If a man die, shall he live again ?’—JoB xiv. 14. 


“... Tam the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were 
dead, yet shall he live: 26. And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never 
die. —JOHN xi. 25, 26. 


Joxp’s question waited long for an answer. Weary 
centuries rolled away; but at last the doubting, almost 
despairing, cry put into the mouth of the man of 
sorrows of the Old Testament is answered by the Man 
of Sorrows of the New. The answer in words is this 
second text which may almost be supposed to allude 
to the ancient question. The answer, in fact, is the 
resurrection of Christ. Apart from this answer there 
is none, 





44 THE BOOK OF JOB [CH. XIV. 


So we may take these two texts to help us to grasp 
more clearly and feel more profoundly what the world 
owes to that great fact which we are naturally led to 
think of to-day. 

I. The ancient and ever returning question. 

The Book of Job is probably a late part of the Old 
Testament. It deals with problems which indicate 
some advance in religious thought. Solemn and mag- 
nificent, and for the most part sad; it is like a Titan 
struggling with large problems, and seldom attaining 
to positive conclusions in which the heart or the head 
can rest in peace. Here all Job’s mind is clouded with 
a doubt. He has just given utterance to an intense 
longing for a life beyond the grave. His abode in 
Sheol is thought of as in some sense a breach in the 
continuity of his consciousness, but even that would be 
tolerable, if only he could be sure that, after many 
days, God would remember him. Then that longing 
gives way before the torturing question of the text, 
which dashes aside the tremulous hope with its insist- 
ent interrogation. It is not denial, but it is a doubt 
which palsies hope. But though he has no certainty, 
he cannot part with the possibility, and so goes on to 
imagine how blessed it would be if his longing were 
fulfilled. He thinks that such a renewed life would be 
like the ‘release’ of a sentry who had long stood on 
guard; he thinks of it as his swift, joyous ‘answer’ to 
God’s summons, which would draw him out from the 
sad crowd of pale shadows and bring him back to 
warmth and reality. His hope takes a more daring 
flight still, and he thinks of God as yearning for His 
creature, as His creature yearns for Him, and having 
‘a desire to the work of His hands,’ as if His heaven 


would be incomplete without His servant. But the 
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v.14] JOBS QUESTION, JESUS’ ANSWER 45 


rapture and the vision pass, and the rest of the chapter 
is all clouded over, and the devout hope loses its light. 
Once again it gathers brightness in the twenty-first 
chapter, where the possibility flashes out starlike, that 
‘after my skin hath been thus destroyed, yet from my 
fiesh shall I see God.’ 

These fluctuations of hope and doubt reveal to us the 
attitude of devout souls in Israel at a late era of the 
national life. And if they show us their high-water 
mark, we need not suppose that similar souls outside 
the Old Testament circle had solid certainty where 
these had but a variable hope. We know how large a 
development the doctrine of a future life had in Assyria 
and in Egypt, and I suppose we are entitled to say that 
men have always had the idea of a future. They have 
always had the thought, sometimes as a fear, some- 
times as a hope, but never asa certainty. It has lacked 
not only certainty but distinctness. It has lacked 
solidity also, the power to hold its own and sustain 
itself against the weighty pressure of intrusive things 
seen and temporal. 

But we need not go to the ends of the earth or to 
past generations for examples of a doubting, superficial 
hold of the truth that man lives through death and 
after it. We have only to look around us, and, alas! 


we have only to look within us. This age is asking 


the question again, and answering it in many tones, 
sometimes of indifferent disregard, sometimes flaunting 
a stark negative without reasoned foundation, some- 
times with affirmatives with as little reason as these 
negatives. The modern world is caught in the rush 
and whirl of life, has its own sorrows to front, its own 
battles to fight, and large sections of it have never 
come as near an answer to Job’s question as Job did. 


46 THE BOOK OF JOB (CH. XIV. 


II. Christ’s all-sufficing answer. 

He gave it there, by the grave of Lazarus, to that 
weeping sister, but He spoke these great words of calm 
assurance to all the world. One cannot but note the 
difference between His attitude in the presence of the 
great Mystery and that of all other teachers. How 
calmly, certainly, and confidently He speaks! 

Mark that Jesus, even at that hour of agony, turns 
Martha’s thoughts to Himself. What He is is the all- 
important thing for her to know. If she understands 
Him, life and death will have no insoluble problems 
nor any hopelessness for her. ‘I am the Resurrection 
and the Life.’ She had risen in her grief to a lofty 
height in believing that ‘even now’—at this moment 
when help is vain and hope is dead— whatsoever thou 
wilt ask of God, God will give it thee, but Jesus offers 
to her a loftier conception of Him when He lays a 
sovereign hand on resurrection and life, and discloses 
that both inhere in Him, and from Him flow to all who 
shall possess them. He claims to have in Himself the 
fountain of life, in all possible senses of the word, as 
well as in the special sense relevant at that sad hour. 
Further, He tells Martha that by faith in Him any and 


all may possess that life. And then He majestically _ 


goes on to declare that the life which He gives is 
immune from, and untouched by, death. The believer 
shall live though he dies, the living believer shall never 
die. Itis clear that, in these two great statements, to 
die is used in two different meanings, referring in the 
former case to the physical fact, and in the latter carry- 
ing a heavier weight of significance, namely the preg- 
nant sense which it usually has in this Gospel, of 
separation from God and consequently from the true 
life of the soul. Physical death is not the termination 


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v.14] JOBS QUESTION, JESUS’ ANSWER 47 


of human life. The grim fact touches only the surface 
life, and has nothing to do with the essential, personal 
being. He that believes on Jesus, and he only, truly 
lives, and his union with Jesus secures his possession 
of that eternal life, which victoriously persists through 
the apparent, superficial change which men call death. 
Nothing dies but the death which surrounds the faith- 
ful soul. For it to die is to live more fully, more 
triumphantly, more blessedly. So though the act of 
physical death remains, its whole character is changed. 
Hence the New Testament euphemisms for death are 
much more than euphemisms. Men christen it by 
names which drape its ugliness, because they fear it 
so much, but Faith can play with Leviathan, because 
it fears it not at all. Hence such names as ‘sleep,’ 
‘exodus, are tokens of the victory won for all believers 
by Jesus. He will show Martha the hope for all His 
followers which begins to dawn even in the calling of 
her brother back from the grip of death. And He shows 
us the great truth that His being the ‘Life’ necessarily 
involved His being also the ‘ Resurrection, for His life- 
communicating work could not be accomplished till 
His all-quickening vitality had flowed over into, and 
flooded with its own conquering tides, not only the 
spirit which believes but its humble companion, the 
soul, and its yet humbler, the body. A bodily life is 
essential to perfect manhood, and Jesus will not stay 
His hand till every believer is full-summed in all his 
powers, and is perfect in body, soul, and spirit, after 
the image of Him who redeemed Him. 

III. The pledge for the truth of the answer. 

The words of Jesus are only words. These precious 
words, spoken to that one weeping sister in a little 
Jewish village, and which have brought hope to millions 





48 THE BOOK OF JOB [cH.xIV. 


ever since, are as baseless as all the other dreams and 
longings of the heart, unless Jesus confirms them by 
fact. If He did not rise from the dead, they are but 
another of the noble, exalted, but futile delusions of 
which the world has many others. If Christ be not 
risen, His words of consolation are swelling words of 
emptiness; His whole claims are ended, and the age- 
old question which Job asked is unanswered still, and 
will always remain unanswered. If Christ be not risen, 
the hopeless colloquy between Jehovah and the prophet 
sums up all that can be said of the future life: ‘Son of 
man, can these bones live?’ And I answered, ‘O Lord 
God, Thou knowest!’ 

But Christ’s resurrection is a fact which, taken in 
connection with His words while on earth, endorses 
these and establishes His claims to be the Declarer of 
the name of God, the Saviour of the world. It gives 
us demonstration of the continuity of life through and 
after death. Taken along with His ascension, which 
is but, so to speak, the prolongation of the point into 
a line, it declares that a glorified body and an abode 
in a heavenly home are waiting for all who by faith 
become here partakers in Jesus and are quickened by 
sharing in His life. 

So in despite of sense and doubt and fear, notwith- - 
standing teachers who, like the supercilious philo- 
sophers on Mars Hill, mock when they hear of a resur- 
rection from the dead, we should rejoice in the great 
light which has shined into the region of the shadow 
of death, we should clasp His divine and most faithful 
answer to that old, despairing question, as the anchor 
of our souls, and lift up our hearts in thanksgiving in 
the triumphant challenge, ‘O death! where is thy 
sting? O grave! where is thy victory?’ 





KNOWLEDGE AND PEACE 


* Acquaint now thyself with Him, and be at peace : thereby good shall come 

unto thee.’—JOB xxii. 21. 
In the sense in which the speaker meant them, these 
words are not true. They mean little more than 
‘It pays to be religious. What kind of notion of 
acquaintance with God Eliphaz may have had, one 
scarcely knows, but at any rate, the whole meaning of 
the text on his lips is poor and selfish. 

The peace promised is evidently only outward tran- 
quillity and freedom from trouble, and the good that is 
to come to Job is plainly mere worldly prosperity. This 
strain of thought is expressed even more clearly in 
that extraordinary bit of bathos, which with solemn 
irony the great dramatist who wrote this book makes 
this Eliphaz utter immediately after the text, ‘The 
Almighty shall be thy defence and—thou shalt have 
plenty of silver!’ It has not been left for commercial 
Englishmen to recommend religion on the ground that 
it produces successful merchants and makes the best of 
both worlds. 

These friends of Job’s all err in believing that suffer- 
ing is always and only the measure of sin, and that you 
ean tell a man’s great guilt by observing his great 
sorrows. And so they have two main subjects on 
which they preach at their poor friend, pouring vitriol 
into his wounds: first, how wicked he must be to be so 
haunted by sorrows; second, how surely he will be 
delivered if he will only be religious after their pattern, 
that is, speak platitudes of conventional devotion and 
say, I submit. 

This is the meaning of our text asit stands. But we 

ID 





50 THE BOOK OF JOB __ [cn. xx 


may surely find a higher sense in which it is true and 
take that to heart. 

I. What is aequainting oneself with God? 

The first thing to note is that this acquaintance 
depends on us. So then there must have been a pre- 
vious objective manifestation on His part. Of course 
there must be a God to know, and there must be a way 
of knowing Him. For us Jesus Christ is the Revealer. 
What men know of God apart from Him is dim, 
shadowy, indistinct; it lacks certainty, and so is not 
knowledge. I venture to say that there is nothing 
between cultivated men and the loss of certain know- 
ledge of God and conviction of His Being, but the 
historical revelation of Jesus Christ. The Christ reveals 
the inmost character of God, and that not in words but 
in deeds. Without Him no man knows God; ‘No man 
knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whom the 
Son will reveal Him.’ 

So then the objective revelation having been made, 
we must on our part embrace that revelation as ours. 
The act of so accepting begins with the familiar act of 
faith, which includes both an exercise of the under- 
standing, as it embraces the facts of Christ's revelation 
of the Father, and of the will as it casts itself upon 
and submits to Him. But that exercise of faith is but 
the point which has to be drawn out into a golden line, 
woven into the whole length of a life. And it is in the 
continuity of that line that the average Christian so 
sadly fails, and because of that failure his acquaintance 
with God is so distant. How little time or thought we 
give to the character of God as revealed in Jesus 
Christ! We must be on intimate terms with Him. 
To know God, as to know a man, we must ‘live with’ 
Him, must summer and winter with Him, must bring 





i ee Tie 





=—_s- 


v. 21] KNOWLEDGE AND PEACE ‘51 


Him into the pettinesses of daily life, must let our love 
set to Him, must be in sympathy with Him, our wills 
being tuned to make harmony with His, our whole 
nature being in accord with His. That is work more 
than enough for a lifetime, enough to task it, enough 
to bless it. 

II. The peace of acquaintance with God. 

Eliphaz meant nothing more than mere earthly tran- 
quillity and exemption from trouble, but his words are 
true in a far loftier region. 

Knowledge of God as He really is brings peace, 
because His heart is full of love. We do but need to 
know the actual state of the heart of God towards us 
to be lapped and folded in peace that nothing outside 
of God and ourselves can destroy. If we lived under 
the constant benediction of the deepest truth in the 
universe, ‘God is love, our peace would be full. That 
is enough, if we believe it to bring peace. The thought 
of God which alarms and terrifies cannot be a true 
thought. But, alas! in proportion as we know ourselves, 
it becomes difficult to believe that God is love. The 
stings of conscience hiss prophecies to us of thatin God 
which cannot but be antagonistic to that in us which 
conscience condemns. Only when our thought of God 
is drawn from the revelation of Him in Jesus Christ, 
does it become possible for any man to grasp in one 
act of his consciousness the conviction, I am a sinner, 
and the conquering conviction, God is Love, and only 
Love to me. So the old exhortation, ‘ Acquaint thyself 
with God and be at peace, comes to be in Christian 
language: ‘Behold God in Jesus, and thou shalt possess 
the peace of God to keep thy heart and mind.’ 

Knowledge of God gives peace, because in it we find 
the satisfaction of our whole nature. Thereby we are 





52 THE BOOK OF JOB (CH. XXII, 


freed from the unrest of tumultuous passions and 
storms of self-will. The internecine war between the 
_ better and the worse selves within ceases to rage, 
and when we have become God’s friends, that in us 
which is meant to rule rules, and that in us which 
is meant to serve serves, and the inner kingdom is no 
longer torn asunder but is harmonised with itself. 
Knowledge of God brings peace amid all changes, for 
he who has God for his continual Companion draws 
little of his supplies from without, and can be tranquil 
when the seas roar and are troubled and the moun- 
tains are cast into the midst of the sea. He bears all 
his treasures with him, and need fear no loss of any 
real good. And at last the angel of peace will lead us 


through the momentary darkness and guide us, after 


a passing shadow on our path, into ‘the land of peace 
wherein we trusted,’ while yet in the land of warfare. 
Jesus still whispers the ancient salutation with which 
He greeted the company in the upper room on the 
evening of the day of resurrection, as He comes to His 
servants here, and it will be His welcome to them 
when He receives them above. 

III. The true good from acquaintance with God. 

As we have already said, Eliphaz was only thinking, 
on Old Testament lines, that prosperity in material 
things was the theocratic reward of allegiance to 
Jehovah. He was rubbing vitriol into Job’s sores, and 
avowedly regarding him as a fear-inspiring instance 
of the converse principle. But we have a better mean- 
ing breathed into his words, since Jesus has taught us 
what is the true good for a man all the days of his life. 
Acquaintance with God is, not merely procures, good. 
To know Him, to clasp Him to our hearts as our 
Friend, our Infinite Lover, our Source of all peace and 





v.21] WHAT LIFE MAY BE MADE 58 


joy, to mould our wills to His and let Him dominate 
our whole selves, to seek our wellbeing in Him alone— 
what else or more can a soul need to be filled with all 
good? Acquaintance with God brings Him in all His 
sufficiency to inhabit else empty hearts. It changes 
the worst, according to the judgment of sense, into the 


best, transforming sorrow into loving discipline, inter- 


preting its meaning, fitting us to bear it, and securing 
to us its blessings. To him that is a friend of God, 


‘Allis right that seems most wrong 
If it be His sweet will.’ 


To be acquainted with God is the quintessence of good. 
‘This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, 
and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.’ 


WHAT LIFE MAY BE MADE 


For then shalt thou have thy delight in the Almighty, and shalt lift up thy 
face unto God. 27. Thou shalt make thy prayer unto Him, and He shall hear 
thee, and thou shalt pay thy vows. 28. Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it 
shall be established unto thee: and the light shall shine upon thy ways. 29, 
When men are cast down, then thou shalt say, . . . lifting up; and He shall save 
the humble person.’—JOB xxii. 26-29. 

THESE words are a fragment of one of the speeches 
of Job’s friends, in which the speaker has been harping 
on the old theme that affliction is the consequence 
and evidence of sin. He has much ado to square his 
theory with facts, and especially with the fact which 
brought him to Job’s dunghill. But he gets over the 
difficulty by the simple method of assuming that, since 
his theory must be true, there must be unknown facts 
which vindicate it in Job’s case; and since affliction 
is a sign of sin, Job’s afflictions are proof that he has 
been a sinner. So he charges him with grossest crimes, 





54 THE BOOK OF JOB [CH. XXII. 


without a shadow of other reason; and after having 
poured this oil of vitriol into his wounds by way of 
consolation, he advises him to be good, on the decidedly 
low and selfish ground that it will pay. 

His often-quoted exhortation, ‘ Acquaint thyself with 
God, and be at peace: thereby good shall come unto 
thee, is, in his meaning of it, an undisguised appeal 
to purely selfish considerations, and its promise is 
not in accordance with facts. Whether that saying 
is noble and true or ignoble and false, depends on the 
meanings attached to ‘peace’ and ‘good.’ A similar 
flaw mars the words of our text, as understood by 
the speaker. But they can be raised to a higher level 
than that on which he placed them, and regarded as 


describing the sweet and wonderful prerogatives of — 


the devout life. So understood, they may rebuke and 
stimulate and encourage us to make our lives con- 
formed to the ideal here. 

I. I note, first, that life may be full of delight and 
confidence in God. 

‘Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Almighty, 
and shalt lift up thy face unto God. Now when we 
‘delight’ in a thing or a person, we recognise that 
that thing, or person, fits into a cleft in our hearts, 


and corresponds to some need in our natures. We- 


not only recognise its good, sweetness, and adaptation 
to ourselves, but we actually possess in real fruition 
the sweetness that we recognise, and the good which 
we apprehend in it. And so these things, the recog- 
nition of the supreme sweetness and all-perfect adap- 
tation and sufficiency of God to all that I need; the 
suppression of tastes and desires which may conflict 
with that sweetness, and the actual enjoyment and 
fruition of the sweetness and preciousness which I 


vs. 26-29] WHAT LIFE MAY BE MADE 55 


apprehend—these things are the very heart of a man’s 
religion. Without delight in God, there is no real 
religion. 

The bulk of men are so sunken and embruted in 
animal tastes and sensuous desires and fleeting delights, 
that they have no care for the pure and calm joys 
which come to those who live near God. But above 
these stand the men, of whom there are a good many 
amongst us, whose religion is a matter of fear or of , 
duty or of effort. And above them there stand the 
men who serve because they trust God, but whose 
religion is seeking rather than finding, and either 
from deficient consecration or from false conceptions 
of Him and of their relation to Him, is overshadowed 
by an unnatural and unwholesome gloom. And all 
these kinds of religion, the religion of fear, of duty, 
of effort, of seeking, and of doubt fighting with faith, 
are at the best wofully imperfect, and are, some of 
them, radically erroneous types of the religious life. 
He is the truly devout man who not only knows 
God to be great and holy, but feels Him to be sweet 
and sufficient; who not only fears, but loves; who not 
only seeks and longs, but possesses; or, in one word, 
true religion is delighting in God. 

So herein is supplied a very sharp test for us. Do 
our tastes and inclinations set towards Him, and is 
He better to us than anything beside? Is God to 
me my dearest faith, the very home of my heart, to 
which I instinctively turn? Is the brightness of my 
day the light of His face? Is He the gladness of my 
joy? Is my Christianity a mill-horse round of service 
that I am not glad to render? DoI worship because 
I think it is duty, and are my prayers compulsory and 
mechanical; or do I worship because my heart goes 





56 THE BOOK OF JOB _ [em. xxu. 


out to Him? And is my life calm and sweet because 
I ‘delight in the Lord’? 

The next words of my text will help us to answer. 
‘Thou shalt lift up thy face unto God. That is a 
clear enough metaphor to express frank confidence of 
approach to Him. The head hangs down in the con- 
sciousness of demerit and sin. ‘Mine iniquities have 
taken hold upon me,’ wailed the Psalmist, ‘so that I 
am not able to look up. But it is possible for men 
to go into God’s presence with a sense of peace, and 
to hold up their heads before their Judge and look 
Him in the eyes and not be afraid. And unless we 
have that confidence in Him, not because of our 
merits, but because of His certain love, there will be 
no ‘delight in the Lord.’ And there will be no such 
confidence in Him unless we have ‘access with con- 
fidence by faith’ in that Christ who has taken away 
our sins, and prepared the way for us into the Father's 
presence, and by whose death and sacrifice, and by it 
alone, we sinful men, with open face and uplifted 
foreheads, can stand to receive upon our visage the 
full beams of His light, and expatiate and be glad 
therein. There is no religion worth naming, of which 
the inmost characteristic is not delight in God. There 
is no ‘delighting in God’ possible for sinful men unless 
they can come to Him with frank confidence, and 
there is no such confidence possible for us unless we 
apprehend by faith, and thereby make our own, the 
great work of Jesus Christ our Lord. 

II. So, secondly, note, such a life of delighting in 
God will be blessed by the frankest intercourse with 
Him. 

‘Thou shalt make thy prayer unto Him, and He 
shall hear thee, and thou shalt pay thy vows.’ These 





vs. 26-29] WHAT LIFE MAY BE MADE 357 


are three stages of this blessed communion that is 
possible for men. And note, prayer is not regarded 
in this aspect as duty, nor is it even dwelt upon as 
privilege, but as being the natural outcome and issue 
of that delighting in God and confident access to Him 
which have preceded. That is to say, if a man really 
has set his heart on God, and knows that in Him is all 
that he needs, then, of course, he will tell Him every- 
thing. As surely as the sunshine draws out the odours 
from the opening petals of the flowers, will the warmth 
of the felt divine light and love draw from our hearts 
the sweet confidence, which it is impossible not to give 
to Him in whom we delight. 

If you have to be driven to prayer by a sense of 
duty, and if there be no impulse in your heart whisper- 
ing ever to you, ‘Tell your Love about it!’ you have 
much need to examine into the reality, and certainly 
into the depth of your religion. For as surely as 
instinctive impulse, which needs no spurring from 
conscience or will, leads us to breathe our confidences 
to those that we love best, and makes us restless whilst 
we have a secret hid from them, so surely will a true 
love to God make it the most natural thing in the 
world to put all our circumstances, wants, and feeling 
into the shape of prayers. They may be in briefest 


words. They may scarcely be vocalised at all, but 


there will be, if there be a true love to Him, an 
instinctive turning to Him in every circumstance; and 
the single-worded cry, if it be no more, for help is 
sufficient. The arrow may be shot towards Heaven, 
though it be but slender and short, and it will reach 
its goal. 

For my text goes on to the second stage, ‘He shall 
hear thee. That was not true as Eliphaz meant it. 





58 THE BOOK OF JOB (cH. XXII. 


But it is true if we remember the preceding conditions. 
The fundamental passage, which I suppose underlies 
part, at least, of our text, is that great word in the 
psalm, ‘Delight thyself in the Lord, and He shall 
give thee the desires of thine heart.’ Does that mean 
that if a man loves God he may get everything he 
wants? Yes! and No! If it is supposed to mean 
that our religion is a kind of key to God’s storehouse, 
enabling us to go in there and rifle it at our pleasure, 
then it is not true; if it means that a man who delights 
himself in God will have his supreme desire set upon 
God, and so will be sure to get it, then it is true. 
Fulfil the conditions and you are sure of the promise. 
If our prayer in its deepest essence be ‘Not my will, 
but Thine, it will be answered. When the desires 
of our heart are for God, and for conformity to His 
will, as they will be when we ‘delight ourselves in 
Him,’ then we get our heart’s desires. There is no 
promise of our being able to impose our wills upon 
God, which would be a calamity, and not a blessing, 
but a promise that they who make Him their joy and 
their desire will never be defrauded of their desire nor 
robbed of their joy. 

And so the third stage of this frank intercourse 
comes. ‘Thou shalt pay thy vows. All life may ~- 
become a thank-offering to God for the benefits that 
have flowed unceasing from His hands. First a prayer, 
then the answer, then the rendered thank-offering. 
Thus, in swift alternation and reciprocity, is carried 
on the commerce between Heaven and earth, between 
man and God. The desires rise to Heaven, but Heaven 
comes down to earth first; and prayer is not the 
initial stage, but the second, in the process. God first 
gives His promise, and the best prayer is the catching 





4 
Li 


vs. 26-29) WHAT LIFE MAY BE MADE 59 


up of God’s promise and tossing it back again whence 
it came. Then comes the second downward motion, 
which is the answer to prayer, in blessing, and on it 
follows, finally, the reflection upwards, in thankful 
surrender and service, of the love that has descended 
on us, in answer to our desires. So like sunbeams 
from a mirror, or heat from polished metal, backwards 
and forwards, in continual alternation and reciproca- 
tion of influence and of love, flash and travel bright 
gleams between the soul and God. ‘Truth springs 
out of the earth, and righteousness looks down from 
Heaven. Our God shall give that which is good, and 
the earth shall yield her increase. Is: there any other 
life of which such alternation is the privilege and the 
joy? 

. III. Then thirdly, such a life will neither know failure 
nor darkness. 

‘Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall be 
established unto thee, and the light shall shine upon 
thy ways. Then is my will to be omnipotent, and am 
I to be delivered from the experiences of disappoint- 
ments and failures and frustrated plans that are 
common to all humanity, and an essential part of its 
discipline, because I am a Christian man? Eliphaz 
may have meant that, but we know something far 
nobler. Again, I say, remember the conditions pre- 
cedent. First of all, there must be the delight in God, 
and the desire towards Him, the submission of the 
will to Him, and the waiting before Him for guidance. 
I decree a thing—if I am a true Christian, and in the 
measure in which I am—only when I am quite sure 
that God has decreed it. And it is only His decrees, 
registered in the chancery of my will, of which I may 
be certain that they shall be established. There will 


60 THE BOOK OF JOB [cu xxm._ 


be no failures to the man whose life’s purpose is to 
serve God, and to grow like Him; but if our purpose 
is anything less than that, or if we go arbitrarily and 
self-willedly resolving and saying, ‘Thus I will; thus 
I command; let my will stand instead of all reason, 
we shall have our contemptuous ‘decrees’ disestab- 
lished many a time. If we run our heads against 
stone walls in that fashion, the walls will stand, and 
our heads will be broken. To serve Him and to fall 
into the line of His purpose, and to determine nothing, 
nor obstinately want anything until we are sure that 
it is His will—that is the secret of never failing in 
what we undertake. 
We must understand a little more deeply than we 
are apt to do what is meant by ‘success, before we 
predict unfailing success for any man. But if we have 
obeyed the commandment from the psalm already 
quoted, which may be again alluded to in the words 
of my text—‘Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust 
also in Him’—we shall inherit the ancient promise, 
‘and He shall bring it to pass. ‘All things work 
together for good to them that love God, and in the 
measure of our love to Him are our discernment and 
realisation of what is truly good. Religion gives no 


screen to keep the weather off us, but it gives us an . 


insight into the truth that storms and rain are good 
for the only crop that is worth growing here. If we 
understand what we are here for, we shall be very 
slow to call sorrow evil, and to crown joy with the 
exclusive title of blessing and good; and we shall have 
a deeper canon of interpretation for the words of my 
text than he who is represented as speaking them ever 
dreamed of. 

So with the promise of light to shine upon our paths. 





vs. 26-29] WHAT LIFE MAY BE MADE 61 


It is ‘the light which never was on sea or land,’ and 
not the material light which sense-bound eyes can see. 
That may all go. But if we have God in our hearts, 
there will be a light upon our way ‘which knows no 
variableness, neither shadow of turning. The Arctic 
winter, sunless though it be, has a bright heaven 
radiant with myriad stars, and flashing with strange 
lights born of no material or visible orb. And so you 
and I, if we delight ourselves ‘in the Lord, will have 
an unsetting sun to light our paths; ‘and at eventide, 
and in the mirkest midnight, ‘there will be light’ in 
the darkness. 

IV. Lastly, such a life will be always hopeful, and 
finally crowned with deliverance. 

‘When they ’—that is, the ways that he has been 
speaking about—‘ when they are cast down, thou shalt 
say, Lifting up. That is an exclamation or a prayer, 
and we might simply render, ‘thou shalt say, Up!’ 
Even in so blessed a life as has been described, times 
will come when the path plunges downwards into 
some ‘valley of the shadow of death. But even then 
the traveller will bate no jot of hope. He will in his 
heart say ‘Up!’ even while sense says ‘Down!’ either as 
expressing indomitable confidence and good cheer in 
the face of depressing circumstances, or as pouring 
out a prayer to Him who ‘has showed him great 
and sore troubles’ that He would ‘bring him up again 
from the depths of the earth. The devout life is 
largely independent of circumstances, and is upheld 
and calmed by a quiet certainty that the, general 
trend of its path is upward, which enables it to trudge 
hopefully down an occasional dip in the road. 

Such an obstinate hopefulness and cheery confidence 
are the natural result of the experiences already de- 





62 THE BOOK OF JOB [CH. XXII. 


seribed in the text. If we delight in God, hold com- 
munion with Him and have known Him as answering 
prayer, prospering our purposes and illuminating our 
paths, how shall we not hope? Nothing need depress 
nor perturb those whose joys and treasures are safe 
above the region of change and loss. If our riches 
are there where neither moth, rust, nor thieves can 
reach, our hearts will be there also, and an inward 
voice will keep singing, ‘Lift up your heart. It is the 
prerogative of experience to light up the future. It 
is the privilege of Christian experience to make hope 
certainty. If we live the life outlined in these verses 
we shall be able to bring June into December, and 
feel the future warmth whilst our bones are chilled 
with the present cold. ‘When the paths are made low, 
thou shalt say, Up!’ 

And the end will vindicate such confidence. For 
the issue of all will be, ‘He will save the humble 
person’; namely, the man who is of the character 
described, and who is ‘lowly of eyes’ in conscious un- 
worthiness, even while he lifts up his face to God in 
confidence in his Father’s love. The ‘saving’ meant 
here is, of course, temporary and temporal deliverance 
from passing outward peril. But we may permissibly 


give it wider and deeper meaning. Continuous partial . 


deliverances lead on to and bring about final full 
salvation. 

We read that into the words, of course. But nothing 
less than a complete and conclusive deliverance can be 
the legitimate end of the experience of the Christian 
life here. Absurdity can no further go than to suppose 
that a soul which has delighted itself in God, and 
looked in His face with frank confidence, and poured 
out his desires to Him, and been the recipient of 





Ss St ee ae ra 


vs.26-29] ‘THE END OF THE LORD’ 63 


numberless answers, and the seat of numberless thank- 
offerings, has travelled along lifes common way in 
cheerful godliness, has had the light of heaven shining 
on the path, and has found an immortal hope springing 
as the natural result of present experience, shall at 
the last be frustrated of all, and lie down in unconscious 
sleep, which is nothingness. If that were the end of 
a Christian life, then ‘the pillared firmament were 
rottenness, and earth’s base built on stubble.’ No, no! 
A heaven of endless blessedness and close communion 
with God is the only possible ending to the facts of the 


_ devout life on earth. 


We have such a life offered to us all and made 
possible through faith in Jesus Christ, in whom we 
may delight ourselves in the Lord, by whom we have 
‘access with confidence,’ who is Himself the light of 
our hope, the answer of our prayers, the joy of our 
hearts, and who will ‘deliver us from every evil work’ 
as we travel along the road; ‘and save us’ at last ‘into 
His heavenly kingdom,’ where we shall be joined to 


‘the Delight of our souls, and drink for evermore of the 


fountain of life. 


‘THE END OF THE LORD’ 


‘Then Job answered the Lord, and said, 2. I know that Thou canst do every 
thing, and that no thought can be withholden from Thee. 3. Whois hethat hideth 
counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered that I understood not; 
things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. 4. Hear, I beseech Thee, and I will 
speak: I will demand of Thee, and declare Thou unto me. 5. [have heard of Thee 
by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee. 6. Wherefore I abhor 
myself, and repent in dust and ashes. 7. And it was so, that after the Lord had 
spoken these words unto Job, the Lord said to Eliphazthe Temanite, My wrath is 
kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of Me 
the thing that is right, as My servant Job hath. 8. Therefore take unto you now 
seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to My servant Job, and offer up for your- 
selves a burnt offering; and My servant Job shall pray for you: for him will I 
accept: lest I deal with you after your folly, in that ye have not spoken of Me the 
thing which is right, like My servant Job. 9. So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad 


We 


64 THE BOOK OF JOB (cH. XLII. 


the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went, and did according as the Lord 
commanded them: the Lord also accepted Job. 10. And the Lord turned the 
captivity of Job, when he'prayed for his friends: also the Lord gave Job twice as 
much as he had before.’—JoB xlii. 1-10. 

THE close of the Book of Job must be taken in connee- 
tion with its prologue, in order to get the full view 
of its solution of the mystery of pain and suffering. 
Indeed the prologue is more completely the solution 
than the ending is; for it shows the purpose of Job's 
trials as being, not his punishment, but his testing. 
The whole theory that individual sorrows were the 
result of individual sins, in the support of which Job's 
friends poured out so many eloquent and heartless 
commonplaces, is discredited from the beginning. The 
magnificent prologue shows the source and purpose 
of sorrow. The epilogue in this last chapter shows 
the effect of it in a good man’s character, and after- 
wards in his life. 

So we have the grim thing lighted up, as it were, at 
the two ends. Suffering comes with the mission of 
trying, what stuff a man is made of, and it leads to 
closer knowledge of God, which is blessed; to lowlier 
self-estimation, which is also blessed; and to renewed 
outward blessings, which hide the old sears and gladden 
the tortured heart. 

Job's final word to God is in beautiful contrast with 
much of his former unmeasured utterances. It breathes 
lowliness, submission, and contented acquiescence in a 
providence partially understood. It does not put into 


Job’s mouth a solution of the problem, but shows how ~ 


its pressure is lightened by getting closer to God. 
Each verse presents a distinct element of thought 
and feeling. 

First comes, remarkably enough, not what might 
have been expected, namely, a recognition of God's 





ls ae ee ee ae, 





vs.1-10]) ‘THE END OF THE LORD’ 65 


righteousness, which had been the attribute impugned 
by Job's ha:ty words, but of His omnipotence. God 
‘can do everything, and none of His ‘thoughts’ or 
purposes can be ‘restrained’ (Rev. Ver.). There had 
been frequent recognitions of that attribute in the 
earlier speeches, but these had lacked the element of 
submission, and been complaint rather than adora- 
tion. Now, the same conviction has different com- 
panions in Job’s mind, and so has different effects, and 
is really different in itself. The Titan on his rock, with 
the vulture tearing at his liver, sullenly recognised 
Jove’s power, but was a rebel still. Such had been 
Job’s earlier attitude, but now that thought comes 
to him along with submission, and so is blessed. Its 
recurrence here, as in a very real sense a new convic- 
tion, teaches us how old beliefs may flash out into new 
significance when seen from a fresh point of view, and 
how the very same thought of God may be an argu- 
ment for arraigning and for vindicating His providence. 

The prominence given, both in the magnificent chap- 
ters in which God answers Job out of the whirlwind 
and in this final confession, to power instead of good- 
ness, rests upon the unspoken principle that ‘the 
divine nature is not a segment, but acircle. Any one 
divine attribute implies all others. Omnipotence can- 
not exist apart from righteousness’ (Davidson’s Job, 
Cambridge Bible for Schools). A mere naked omni- 
potence is not God. If we rightly understand His 
power, we can rest upon it as a Hand sustaining, not 
crushing, us. ‘He doeth all things well’ is a conviction 


_- as closely connected with ‘I know that Thou canst 


do all things’ as light is with heat. 
The second step in Job’s confession is the acknow- 
ledgment of the incompleteness of his and all men’s 
E 





66 THE BOOK OF JOB (oH. XLIT. 


materials and capacities for judging God’s providence. 
Verse 3 begins with quoting God's rebuke(Job xxxviii. 2). 
It had cut deep, and now Job makes it his own confes- 
sion. We should thus appropriate as our own God's 
merciful indictments, and when He asks, ‘ Who is it?” 
should answer with lowliness, ‘Lord, it is I.’ Job had 
been a critic; he is a worshipper. He had tried to 
fathom the bottomless, and been angry because his 
short measuring-line had not reached the depths. 
But now he acknowledges that he had been talk-— 
ing about what passed his comprehension, and 
also that his words had been foolish in their rash- 
ness, | 

Is then the solution of the whole only that old — 
commonplace of the unsearchableness of the divine — 
judgments? Not altogether; for the prologue gives, 
if not a complete, yet a real, key to them. But still, 
after all partial solutions, there remains the inscrut-— 
able element in them. The mystery of pain and suffer- 
ing is still a mystery; and while general principles, 
taught us even more clearly in the New Testament 
than in this book, do lighten the ‘weight of all this 
unintelligible world,’ we have still to take Job's language 
as the last word on the matter, and say, ‘How un- 
searchable are His judgments, and His ways past 
finding out!’ 4 

For individuals, and on the wider field of the world, - 
God’s way is in the sea; but that does not bewilder 
those who also know that it is also in the sanctuary. 
Job’s confession as to his rash speeches is the best 
estimate of many elaborate attempts to ‘ vindicate the 
ways of God to man. It is better to trust than to 
criticise, better to wait than to seek prematurely to 
understand. 















vs.1-10] ‘THE END OF THE LORD’ 67 


Verse 4, like verse 3, quotes the words of God 
(Job xxxviii. 3; xl. 7). They yield a good meaning, if 
regarded as a repetition of God’s challenge, for the 
purpose of disclaiming any such presumptuous contest. 
But they are perhaps better understood as expressing 
Job’s longing, in his new condition of humility, for 
fuller light, and his new recognition of the way to 
pierce to a deeper understanding of the mystery, by 
illumination from God granted in answer to his prayer. 
He had tried to solve his problem by much, and some- 
times barely reverent, thinking. He had racked brain 
and heart in the effort, but he has learned a more 
excellent way, as the Psalmist had, who said, ‘When I 
thought, in order to know this, it was too painful for 
me, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then 
understood I.’ Prayer will do more for clearing mys- 
teries than speculation, however acute, and it will 
change the aspect of the mysteries which it does not 
clear from being awful to being solemn—veils covering 
depths of love, not clouds obscuring the sun. 

The centre of all Job’s confession is in verse 5, which 
contrasts his former and present knowledge of God, 
as being mere hearsay before, and eyesight now. A 
clearer understanding, but still more, a sense of His 
nearness, and an acquaintance at first hand, are im- 
plied in the bold words, which must not be interpreted 
of any outward revelation to sense, but of the direct, 
full, thrilling consciousness of God which makes all 
men’s words about Him seem poor. That change was 
the master transformation in Job’s case, as it is for 
us all. Get closer to God, realise His presence, live 
beneath His eye and with your eyes fixed on Him, and 
ancient puzzles will puzzle no longer, and wounds will 
cease to smart, and instead of angry expostulation or 





68 THE BOOK OF JOB [cx xx. 


bewildered attempts at construing His dealings, there 
will come submission, and with submission, peace. 

The cure for questionings of His providence is ex- 
perience of His nearness, and blessedness therein. 
Things that loomed large dwindle, and dangers melt 
away. The landscape is the same in shadow and sun- 
shine; but when the sun comes out, even snow and ice 
sparkle, and tender beauty starts into visibility in grim 
things. So, if we see God, the black places of life are 
lighted; and we cease to feel the pressure of many 
difficulties of speculation and practice, both as regards 
His general providence and His revelation in law and 
gospel. 

The end of the whole matter is Job’s retractation of 
his words and his repentance. ‘I abhor’ has no object 
expressed, and is better taken as referring to the 
previous speeches than to ‘myself.’ He means thereby 
to withdraw them all. The next clause, ‘I repent in 
dust and ashes, carries the confession a step farther. 
He recognises guilt in his rash speeches, and bows 
before his God confessing his sin. Where are his 
assertions of innocence gone? One sight of God has 
scattered them, as it ever does. A man who has learned 
his own sinfulness will find few difficulties and no 
occasions for complaint in God’s dealings with him. 
If we would see aright the meaning of our sorrows, we 
must look at them on our knees. Get near to God in 
heart-knowledge of Him, and that will teach our sinful- 
ness, and the two knowledges will combine to explain 
much of the meaning of sorrow, and to make the un- 
explained residue not hard to endure. 

The epilogue in prose which follows Job’s confession, 
tells of the divine estimate of the three friends, of 
Job’s sacrifice for them, and of his renewed outward 





vs.1-10] ‘THE END OF THE LORD’ 69 


prosperity. The men who had tried to vindicate God’s 
righteousness are charged with not having spoken 
that which is right; the man who has passionately 
impugned it is declared to have thus spoken. No 
doubt, Eliphaz and his colleagues had said a great 
many most excellent, pious things, and Job as many 
wild and untrue ones. But their foundation principle 
was not a true representation of God’s providence, 
since it was the uniform connection of sin with sorrow, 
and the accurate proportion which these bore to each 
other. 

Job, on the other hand, had spoken truth in his 
denials of these principles, and in his longings to have 
the righteousness of God set in clear relation to his 
own afflictions. We must remember, too, that the 
friends were talking commonplaces learned by rote, 
while Job’s words came scalding hot from his heart. 
Most excellent truth may be so spoken as to be 
wrong; and it is so, if spoken heartlessly, regardless of 
sympathy, and flung at sufferers like a stone, rather 
than laid on their hearts as a balm. God lets a true 
heart dare much in speech; for He knows that the 
sputter and foam prove that ‘the heart’s deeps boil 
in earnest.’ 

Job is put in the place of intercessor for the three— 
a profound humiliation for them and an honour for 
him. They obeyed at once, showing that they have 
learned their lesson, as well as Job his. An incidental 
lesson from that final picture of the sufferer become 
the priest requiting accusations with intercession, is 
the duty of cherishing kind feelings and doing kind 
acts to those who say hard things of us. It would 
be harder for some of us to offer sacrifices for our 
Eliphazes than to argue with them. And yet another 





70 THE BOOK OF JOB (cu. xu. 


is that sorrow has for one of its purposes to make the 
heart more tender, both for the sorrows and the faults 
of others. 

Note, too, that it was ‘when Job prayed for his 
friends’ that the Lord turned his captivity. That isa 
proverbial expression, bearing witness, probably, to the 
deep traces left by the Exodus, for reversing calamity. 
The turning-point was not merely the confession, but 
the act, of beneficence. So, in ministering to others, 
one’s own griefs may be soothed. 

The restoration of outward good in double measure 
is not meant as the statement of a universal law of 
Providence, and still less as a solution of the problem 
of the book. But it is putting the truth that sorrows, 
rightly borne, yield peaceable fruit at the last, in the 
form appropriate to the stage of revelation which the 
whole book represents; that is, one in which the 
doctrine of immortality, though it sometimes rises 
before Job’s mind as an aspiration of faith, is not 
set in full light. 

To us, living in the blaze of light which Jesus Christ 
has let into the darkness of the future, the ‘end of the 
Lord’ is that heaven should crown the sorrows of His 
children on earth. We can speak of light, transitory 
affliction working out an eternal weight of glory. The, 
book of Job is expressing substantially the same ex- 
pectation, when it paints the calm after the storm and 
the restoration in double portion of vanished blessings. 
Many desolate yet trusting sufferers know how little 
such an issue is possible for their grief, but if they 
have more of God in clearer sight of Him, they will 
find empty places in their hearts and homes filled. 











THE PROVERBS 


A YOUNG MAN’S BEST COUNSELLOR 


‘The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel; 2. To know wisdom 
and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding; 3. To receive the 
instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity; 4. To give subtilty to 
the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion, 5. A wise man will hear, 
and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise 
counsels: 6. To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the 
wise, and their dark sayings. 7. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of know- 
ledge : but fools despise wisdom and instruction. 8. My son, hear the instruc- 
tion of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: 9. For they shall be an 
ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck. 10. My son, if 
sinners entice thee, consent thou not. 11. If they say, Come with us, let us lay 
wait for blood, let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause: 12. Let us 
swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the 
pit: 13. We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil: 
14. Cast in thy lot among us; let usall have one purse: 15. Myson, walk not 
thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path: 16. For their feet 
run to evil, and make haste to shed blood. 17. (Surely in vain the net is spread in 
the sightofany bird:) 18. And they lay wait for their own blood ; they lurk privily 
for their own lives. 19. So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; which 
taketh away the life of the owners thereof.’—PROV. i. 1-19. 


THIS passage contains the general introduction to the 
book of Proverbs. It falls into three parts—a state- 
ment of the purpose of the book (vs. 1-6); a summary 


of its foundation principles, and of the teachings to 
which men ought to listen (vs.7-9); and an antithetic 


statement of the voices to which they should be deaf 
(vs. 10-19). 


I. The aim of the book is stated to be twofold— 
to enable men, especially the young, to ‘know wisdom,’ 
and to help them to ‘discern the words of understand- 
ing’; that is, to familiarise, by the study of the book, 
with the characteristics of wise teachings, so that there 


_ may be no mistaking seducing words of folly for these. 


71 








72 THE PROVERBS (cH. 1. 


These two aims are expanded in the remaining verses, 
the latter of them being resumed in verse 6, while the 
former occupies the other verses. 

We note how emphatically the field in which this 
wisdom is to be exercised is declared to be the moral 
conduct of life. ‘Righteousness and judgment and 
equity’ are ‘wise dealing, and the end of true wisdom 
is to practise these. The wider horizon of modern 
science and speculation includes much in the notion of 
wisdom which has no bearing on conduct. But the 
intellectual progress (and conceit) of to-day will be 
none the worse for the reminder that a man may take 
in knowledge till he is ignorant, and that, however 
enriched with science and philosophy, if he does not 
practise righteousness, he is a fool. 

We note also the special destination of the book— 
for the young. Youth; by reason of hot blood and 
inexperience, needs such portable medicines as are 
packed in these proverbs, many of them the condensa- 
tion into a vivid sentence of world-wide truths. There 
are few better guides for a young man than this book 
of homely sagacity, which is wisdom about the world 
without being tainted by the bad sort of worldly 
wisdom. But unfortunately those who need it most 
relish it least, and we have for the most part to re- 
discover its truths for ourselves by our own, often 
bitter, experience. 

We note, further, the clear statement of the way 
by which incipient ‘wisdom’ will grow, and of the 
_ certainty of its growthif itis real. It is the ‘wise man’ 
who will ‘increase in learning, the ‘man of understand- 
ing’ who ‘attains unto sound counsels.’ The treasures 
are thrown away on him who has no heart for them. 
You may lavish wisdom on the ‘fool, and it will run off 


—_———— 


vs. 1-19) THE BEST COUNSELLOR 73 


him like water off a rock, fertilising nothing, and 
stopping outside him. 

The Bible would not have met all our needs, nor 
gone with us into all regions of our experience, if it 
had not had this book of shrewd, practical common- 
sense. Christianity is the perfection of common sense. 
‘Godliness hath promise of the life which now is.’ 
The wisdom of the serpent, which Jesus enjoins, has 
none of the serpent’s venom in it. It is no sign of 
spirituality of mind to be above such mundane con- 
siderations as this book urges. If we hold our heads 
too high to look to our road and our feet, we are sure 
to fall into a pit. 

II. Verses 7-9 may be regarded as a summary state- 
ment of the principle on which the whole book.is based, 
and of the duty which it enjoins. The principle is that 
true wisdom is based on religion, and the duty is to 
listen to parental instruction. ‘My son, is the address 
of a teacher to his disciples, rather than of a father to 
his child. The characteristic Old Testament designa- 
tion of religion as ‘thefear of Jehovah’ corresponds to 
the Old Testament revelation of Him as the Holy One, 
—that is, as Him who is infinitely separated from 
creatural being and limitations. Therefore is He ‘to 
be had in reverence of all’ who would be ‘about Him’; 
that fear of reverential awe in which no slavish dread 
mingles, and which is perfectly consistent with aspira- 
tion, trust, and love. The Old Testament reveals Him 
as separate from men; the New Testament reveals Him 
as united to men in the divine man, Christ Jesus. 
Therefore its keynote is the designation of religion as 
‘the love of God’; but that name is no contradiction of 
the earlier, but the completion of it. 

That fear is the beginning or basis of wisdom, because 





74 THE PROVERBS [cH. 1. 


wisdom is conceived of as God’s gift, and the surest 
way to get it is to ‘ask of God’ (Jas.i. 5). Religion is, 
further, the foundation of wisdom, inasmuch as irre- 
ligion is the supreme folly of creatures so dependent 
on God, and so hungering after Him in the depths 
of their being, as we are. In whatever directions a 
godless man may be wise, in the most important matter 
of all, his relations to God, he is unwise, and the epitaph 
for all such is ‘Thou fool!’ 

Further, religion is the fountain of wisdom, in the 
sense of the word in which this book uses it, since 
it opens out into principles of action, motives, and 
communicated powers, which lead to right apprehen- 
sion and willing discharge of the duties of life. Godless 
men may be scientists, philosophers, encyclopedias of 
knowledge, but for want of religion, they blunder in 
the direction of their lives, and lack wisdom enough to 
keep them from wrecking the ship on the rocks. 

The Israelitish parent was enjoined to teach his or 
her children the law of the Lord. Here the children 
are enjoined to listen to the instruction. Reverence 
for traditional wisdom was characteristic of that state 
of society, and since a divine revelation stood at the 
beginning of the nation’s history, it was not unreason- 
able to look back for light. Nowadays, a belief’s being 
our fathers’ is with many a reason for not making it 
ours. But perhaps that is no more rational than the 
blind adherence to the old with which this emanci- 
pated generation reproaches its predecessors. Possibly 
there are some ‘old lamps’ better than the new ones 
now hawked about the streets by so many loud-voiced 
vendors. The youth of this day have much need of the 
exhortation to listen to the ‘instruction’ (by which is 
meant, not only teaching by word, but discipline by 


vs. 1-19] THE BEST COUNSELLOR 75 


act) of their fathers, and to the gentler voice of the 
mother telling of law in accents of love. These pre- . 
cepts obeyed will be fairer ornaments than jewelled 
necklaces and wreathed chaplets. 

III. On one side of the young man are those who 
would point him tothe féar of Jehovah; on the other 
are seducing whispers, tempting him to sin. That is 
the position in which we all stand. It is not enough to 
listen to the nobler voice. We have resolutely to stop 
our ears to the baser, which is often the louder. Facile 
yielding to the cunning inducements which strew every 
path, and especially that of the young, is fatal. If we 
cannot say ‘No’ to the base, we shall not say ‘ Yes’ to 
the noble voice. To be weak is generally to be wicked; 
for in this world the tempters are more numerous, and 
to sense and flesh, more potent than those who invite 
to good. 

The example selected of such enticers is not of the 
kind that most of us are in danger from. But the sort 
of inducements held out are in all cases substantially 
the same. ‘Precious substance’ of one sort or another 
is dangled before dazzled eyes; jovial companionship 
draws young hearts. The right or wrong of the thing 


is not mentioned, and even murder and robbery are pre- 


sented as rather pleasant excitement, and worth doing 
for the sake of what is got thereby. Are the desirable 


_ consequences so sure? Is there no chance of being 


caught red-handed, and stoned then and there, as a 


murderer? The tempters are discreetly silent about 


that possibility, as all tempters are. Sin always de- 
ceives, and its baits artfully hide the hook; but the 
cruel barb is there, below the gay silk and coloured 


i dressing, and it—not the false appearance of food which 


lured the fish—is what sticks in the bleeding mouth. 








76 THE PROVERBS (cH. 1. 


The teacher goes on, in verses 15 to 19, to supply the 
truth which the tempters tried to ignore. He does so 
in three weighty sentences, which strip the tinsel off 
the temptation, and show its real ugliness. The flowery 
way to which they coax is a way of ‘evil’; that should 
be enough to settle the question. The first thing to 
ask about any course is not whether it is agreeable or 
disagreeable, but Is it right or wrong? Verse 17 is 
ambiguous, but probably the ‘net’ means the tempters’ 
speech in verses 11 to 14, and the ‘bird’ is the young 
man supposed to be addressed. The sense will then be, 
‘Surely you are not foolish enough to fly right into the 
meshes, and to go with your eyes open into so trans- 
parent sin!’ 

Verse 18 points to the grim possibility already re- 
ferred to, that the would-be murderers will be caught 
and executed. But its lesson is wider than that one 
case, and declares the great solemn truth that all sin is 
suicide. Who ever breaks God’s law slays himself. 

What is true about ‘covetousness, as verse 19 tells, 
is true about all kinds of sin—that it takes away the 
life of those who yield to it, even though it may also 
fill their purses, or in other ways may gratify their 
desires. Surely it is folly to pursue a course which, 
however it may succeed in its immediate aims, brings 
real death, by separation from God, along with it. He 
is not a very wise man who ties his gold round him 
when the ship founders. He is not parted from his 
treasure certainly, but it helps to sink him. We may 
get what we want by sinning, but we get also what we 
did not want or reckon on—that is, eternal death. 
‘This their way is their folly. Yet, strange to tell, 
their posterity ‘approve their sayings,’ and follow their 
doings. 


. 





WISDOM’S CALL 


"Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets: 21. She crieth in 
the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth 
her words, saying, 22. How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the 
scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? 23. Turn you at my 
reproof: behold, I will pour out my Spirit unto you, I will make known my words 
unto you. 24. Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my 
hand, and no man regarded; 23. But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and 
would none of my reproof: 26. I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock 
when your fear cometh; 27. When your fear cometh as desolation, and your 
destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. 
28. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, 
but they shall not find me: 29. For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose 
the fear of the Lord: 30. They would none of my counsel; they despised all my 
reproof. 31. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled 
with their own devices. 32. For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, 
and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. 33. But whoso hearkeneth unto 
me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil. —PROVERBS i. 20-33. 
OvuR passage begins with a striking picture. A fair 
and queenly woman stands in the crowded resorts of 
men, and lifts up a voice of sweet entreaty—authorita- 
tive as well as sweet. Her nameis Wisdom. The word 
is in the plural in the Hebrew, as if to teach that in this 
serene and lovely form all manifold wisdoms are 
gathered and made one. Who then is she? It is easy 
to say ‘a poetical personification, but that does not add 
much to our understanding. It is clear that this book 
means much more by Wisdom than a human quality 
merely; for august and divine attributes are given to 
her, and she is the co-eternal associate of God Himself. 
Dwelling in His bosom, she thence comes forth to 
inspire all human good deeds, to plead evermore with 
men, to enrich those who listen to her with choicest 
gifts. Intellectual clearness, moral goodness, religious 
devotion, are all combined in the idea of Wisdom as 
belonging to men. 

The divine source of all, and the correspondence 
between the human and the divine nature, are taught 


in the residence of this personified Wisdom with God 
7 


738 THE PROVERBS (cH. 1. 


before she dwelt with men. The whole of the manifold | 


revelations, by which God makes known any part of 
His will to men, are her voice. Especially the call 
contained in the Old Testament revelation is the 
summons of Wisdom. But whether the writer of this 
book had any inkling of deeper truth still, or not, we 
cannot but connect the incomplete personification of 
divine Wisdom here with its complete incarnation in a 
Person who is ‘the power of God and the wisdom of 
God, and who embodies the lineaments of the grand 
picture of a Wisdom erying in the streets, even while it 
is true of Him that ‘He does not strive nor ery, nor 
cause His voice to be heard in the streets’; for the 
crying, which is denied to be His, is ostentatious and 
noisy, and the crying which is asserted to be hers is the 
plain, clear, universal appeal of divine love as well as 
wisdom. The light of Christ ‘lighteth every man that 
cometh into the world.’ 


The call of Wisdom in this passage begins a 


remonstrance and plain speech, giving their right 
names to men who neglect her voice. The first step in 
delivering men from evil—that is, from foolish—courses 
is to put very clearly before them the true character 


of their acts, and still more of their inclinations. — 


Gracious offers and rich promises come after; but the 
initial message of Wisdom to such men as we are must 
be the accusation of folly. ‘When she is come, she 
will convict the world of sin.’ 


The three designations of men in verse 22 are probably s 


arranged so as to make a climax. First come ‘the 


simple, or, as the word means, ‘open. There is a | 


sancta simplicitas, a holy ignorance of evil, which is 


sister to the highest wisdom. It is well to be ignorant : 


as well as ‘innocent of much transgression’; and there 








v8. 20-33] WISDOM’S CALL 79 


is no more mistaken and usually insincere excuse for 
going into foul places than the plea that it is best to 
know the evil and so choose the good. That knowledge 
comes surely and soon enough without our seeking it. 
But there is a fatal simplicity, open-eared, like Eve, to 
the Tempter’s whisper, which believes the false pro- 
mises of sin, and as Bunyan has taught us, is companion 
of sloth and presumption. 

Next come ‘scorners, who mock at good. A man 
must have gone a long way down hill before he begins 
to gibe at virtue and godliness. But the descent is 
steep, though the distance is long; and the ‘simple’ 
who begins to do what is wrong will come to sneer at 
what is right. 

Then last comes the ‘fool,’ the name which, in Pro- 
verbs, is shorthand for mental stupidity, moral obstin- 
acy, and dogged godlessness,—a foul compound, but one 
which is realised oftener than we think. A great many 
very superior intellects, cultivated ladies and gentlemen, 
university graduates, and the like, would be uncere- 
moniously set down by divine wisdom as fools; and 
surely if account is taken of the whole compass and 
duration of our being, and of all our relations to things 
and persons seen and unseen, nothing can be more 
stupid than godlessness, however cultured. The word 
literally means coarse or thick, and may suggest the 
idea of stolid insensibility as the last stage in the down- 
ward progress. 

But note that the charge is directed, not against 
deeds, but dispositions. Perverted love and perverted 
hatred underlie acts. The simple love simplicity, pre- 
ferring to be unwarned against evil; the scorner finds 
delight in letting his rank tongue blossom into speech ; 


and the false direction given to love gives a fatal 





80 THE PROVERBS (cH. L 


twist to its corresponding hate, so that the fool detests 
‘knowledge’ as a thief the policeman’s lantern. You 
cannot love what you should loathe, without loathing 
what you should love. Inner longings and revulsions 
settle character and acts. 

Verse 23 passes into entreaty; for it is vain to rouse 
conscience by plain speech, unless something is offered 
to make better life possible. The divine Wisdom comes 
with a rod, but also with gifts; but if the rod is kissed, 
the rewards are possessed. The relation of clauses in 
verse 23 is that the first is the condition of the fulfil- 
ment of the second and third. If we turn at her 
reproof, two great gifts will be bestowed. Her spirit 
within will make us quick to hear and receive her 
words sounding without. Whatever other good follows 
on yielding to the call of divine Wisdom (and the 
remaining early chapters of Proverbs magnificently 
detail the many rich gifts that do follow), chief of all 
are spirits swift to hear and docile to obey her voice, 
and then actual communications to purged ears. 
Outward revelation without prepared hearts is water 
spilt upon rock. Prepared hearts without a message to 
them would be but multiplication of vain longings; 
and God never stultifies Himself, or gives mouths with- 
out sending meatto fill them. To the submissive spirit, 
there will not lack either disposition to hear or clear 
utterance of His will. 

But now comes a pause. Wisdom has made her 
offers in the crowded streets, and amid all the noise 
and bustle her voice has rung out. What is the result? 
Nothing. Not a head has been turned, nor an eye 
lifted. The bustle goes on as before. ‘They bought, 
they sold,’ as if no voice had spoken. So, after the dis- 
appointed waiting of Wisdom, her voice peals out again, 


eo" 


vs. 20-33] WISDOM’S CALL 81 


but this time with severity in its tones. Note how, in 
verses 24 and 25, the sin of sins against the pleading 
Wisdom of God is represented as being simple indif- 
ference. ‘Ye refused, ‘no man regarded,’ ‘set at 
nought,’ ‘would none of’—these are the things which 
bring down the heavy judgments. It does not need 
violent opposition or black crime to wreck a soul. 
Simply doing nothing when God speaks is enough to 
effect destruction. There is no need to lift up angry 
arms in hostility. If we keep them hanging listless by 
our sides, it is sufficient. The gift escapes us, if we 
simply keep our hands shut or held behind our backs. 
Alas, for ears which have not heard, for seeing eyes 
which have not seen because they loved evil simplicity 
and hated knowledge! 

Then note the terrible retribution. That is an awful 
picture of the mocking laughter of Wisdom, accompany- 
ing the rush of the whirlwind and the groans of 
anguish and shrieks of terror. It is even more solemn 
and dreadful than the parallel representations in 
Psalm ii., for there the laughter indicates God’s know- 
ledge that the schemes of opponents are vain, but here 
it figures pleasure in calamities. Of course it is to be 
remembered that the Wisdom thus represented is not 
to be identified with God; but still the imagery is 
startling, and needs to be taken along with declarations 
that God has ‘no pleasure in the death of the sinner,’ 
and to ke imterpreted as indicating, with daring 
anthropomerphism, the inevitable character of the 
‘destruction,’ and the uselessness of appeals to the 
Wisdom once despised. But we joyfully remember that 
the Incarnate Wisdom, fairer than the ancient personi- 
fication, wept over the city which He knew must perish. 

Verses 28-31 carry on the picture of too late repentance 

F 


82 THE PROVERBS (cH. L. 


and inevitable retribution. They who let Wisdom cry, 
and paid no heed, shall ery to her in their turn, and be 
unnoticed. They whom she vainly sought shall vainly 
seek for her. Actions have their consequences, which 
are not annihilated because the doers do not like them. 
Thoughts have theirs; for the foolish not only eat of 
the fruit of their ways or doings, but are filled with 
their own devices or counsels. ‘Whatsoever a man 
soweth, that shall he also reap. That inexorable law 
works, deaf to all cries, in the field of earthly life, both 
as regards condition and character; and that field of its 
operation is all that the writer of this book has in 
view. He is not denying the possibility of forgiveness, 
nor the efficacy of repentance, nor is he asserting that 
a penitent soul ever seeks God in vain; but he is 
declaring that it is too late to cry out for deliverance 
from consequences of folly when the consequences have 
us in their grip, and that wishes for deliverance are 
vain, though sighs of repentance are not. We cannot 
reap where we have not sowed. We must reap what 
we have. If we are such sluggards that we will ‘not 
plough in winter by reason of the cold,’ we shall ‘beg in 
harvest and have nothing.’ 

But though the writer had probably only this life in 
view, Jesus Christ has extended the teaching to the 
next, when He has told of those who will seek to enter 
in and not beable. The experience of the fruits of their 
godlessness will make godless men wish to escape eating 
the fruits—and that wish shall be vain. It is not for 
us to enlarge on such words, but it is for us all to lay 
them to heart, and to take heed that we listen now to 
the beseeching call of the heavenly Wisdom in its 
tenderest and noblest form, as it appeared in Christ, 
the Incarnate Word. 





er 


— ew. —— EC “ke ee 


vs. 20-33] WISDOM’S CALL 83 


Verses 32 and 33 generalise the preceding promises 
and warnings in a great antithesis. ‘The backsliding 
[or, turning away] of the simple slays them.’ There is 
allusion to Wisdom’s call in verse 23. The simple had 
turned, but in the wrong direction—away from and 
nottowards her. Toturn away from heavenly Wisdom 
is to set one’s face toward destruction. It cannot be 
too earnestly reiterated that we must make our choice 
of one of two directions for ourselves—either towards 
God, to seek whom is life, to find whom is heaven; or 
away from Him, to turn our backs on whom is to 
embrace unrest, and to be separate from whom is 
death. ‘The security of fools,’ by which is meant, not 
their safety, but their fancy that they are safe, ‘ destroys 
them.’ No man is in such danger as the careless man 
of the world who thinks that heisall right. A traveller 
along the edge of a precipice in the night, who goes on 
as if he walked a broad road and takes no heed to his 
footing, will soon repent his rashness at the bottom, 
mangled and bruised. A man who in this changing 
world fancies that he sits as a king, and sees no sorrow, 
will have a rude wakening. A moment's heed saves 
hours of pain. 

The alternative to this suicidal folly is in listening to 
Wisdom’s call. Whoever does that will ‘dwell safely,’ 
not in fancied but real security; and in his quiet heart 
there need be no unrest from feared evils, for he will 
have hold of a charm which turns evils into good, and 
with such a guide he cannot go astray, nor with such a 
defender be wounded to death, nor with such a com- 
panion ever be solitary. If Christ be our Light, we 
shall not walk in darkness. If He be our Wisdom, we 
shall not err. If He be our Life, we shall never see 
death. If He is our Good, we shall fear no evil. 





THE SECRET OF WELL-BEING 


‘My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments : 
2. For length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee. 3. Let not 
mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the 
table of thine heart: 4. So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the 
sight of God and man. 5. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean notunto 
thine own understanding. 6. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall 
direct thy paths. 7. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart 
from evil. 8. It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones. 9. Honour 
the Lord with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase: 10. So 
shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.’ 
—PROVEBRBS iii. 1-10. 


THE first ten verses of this passage form a series of five 
couplets, which enforce on the young various phases 
of goodness by their tendency to secure happiness or 
blessedness of various sorts. The underlying axiom is 
that, in a world ruled by a good Being, obedience must 
lead to well-being; but while that is in the general 
true, exceptions do occur, and good men do encounter 
evil times. Therefore the glowing promises of these 
verses are followed by two verses which deal with the 
explanation of good men’s afflictions, as being results 
and tokens of God's fatherly love. 

The first couplet is general in character. It incul- 
cates obedience to the precepts of the teacher, and 
gives as reason the assurance that thereby long life 
and peace will be secured. True to the Old Testament 
conception of revelation as a law, the teacher sets 
obedience in the forefront. He is sure that his teaching 
contains the sufficient guide for conduct, and coincides 
with the divine will. He calls, in the first instance, for 
inward willing acceptance of His commandments; for 
it is the heart, not primarily the hands, which he desires 


should ‘keep’ them. The mother of all graces of con-- 


duct is the bowing of the will to divine authority. The 
will is the man, and where it ceases to lift itself up in 


self-sacrificing and self-determining rebellion, and dis- 
84 


a 


<= -=z=- 


vs. 1-10] THE SECRET OF WELL-BEING 85 


solves into running waters of submission, these will 
flow through the life and make it pure. To obey self 
is sin, to obey God is righteousness. The issues of such 
obedience are ‘length of days .. . and peace.’ 

Even if we allow for the difference between the Old 
and the New Testaments, it remains true that a life 
conformed to God’s will tends to longevity, and that 
many forms of sin do shorten men’s days. Passion 
and indulged appetites eat away the very flesh, and 
many a man’s ‘bones are full of the sin of his youth.’ 
The profligate has usually ‘a short life, whether he 
succeeds in making it ‘merry’ or not. 

‘Peace’ is a wide word, including all well-being. Ease- 
loving Orientals, especially when living in warlike times, 
naturally used the phrase as a shorthand expression 
for all good. Busy Westerns, torn by the distractions 
and rapid movement of modern life, echo the sigh for 
repose which breathes in the word. ‘There is no joy 
but calm,’ and the sure way to deepest peace is to give 
up self-will and live in obedience. 

The second couplet deals with our relations to one 
another, and puts forward the two virtues of ‘loving- 
kindness and truth ’—that is truth, or faithfulness—as 
all-inclusive. They are the two which are often jointly 
ascribed to God, especially in the Psalms. Our attitude 
to one another should be moulded in God’s to us all. 
The tiniest crystal has the same facets and angles as 
the largest. The giant hexagonal pillars of basalt, like 
our Scottish Staffa, are identical in form with the 
microscopic crystals of the same substance. God is 
our Pattern; goodness is likeness to Him. 

These graces are to be bound about the neck, perhaps 
as an ornament, but more probably as a yoke by which 
the harnessed ox draws its burden, If we have them, 





86 THE PROVERBS [on 111. 


they will fit us to bear one another’s burdens, and will 
lead to all human duties to our fellows. 

These graces are also to be written on the ‘table 
of the heart’; that is, are to be objects of habitual 
meditation with aspiration. If so, they will come to 
sight in life. He who practises them will ‘find favour 
with God and man,’ for God looks with complacency 
on those who display the right attitude to men; and 
men for the most part treat us as we treat them. 
There are surly natures which are not won by kindness, 
like black tarns among the hills, that are gloomy even 
in sunshine, and requite evil for good; but the most 
of men reflect our feelings to them. 

‘Good understanding’ is another result. It is 
‘found’ when it is attributed to us, so that the expres- 
sion substantially means that the possessors of these 
graces will win the reputation of being really wise, not 
only in the fallible judgment of men, but before the 
pure eyes of the all-seeing God. Really wise policy 
coincides with loving-kindness and truth. 

The remaining couplets refer to our relations to God. 
The New Testament is significantly anticipated in the 
pre-eminence given to trust; that is, faith. Nor less 
significant and profound is the association of self- 
distrust with trust in the Lord. The two things are 
inseparable. They are but the under and upper sides 
of one thing, or like the two growths that come from 
a seed—one striking downwards becomes the root; 
one piercing upwards becomes the stalk. The double 
attitude of trust and distrust finds expression in 
acknowledging Him in all our ways; that is, ordering 
our conduct under a constant consciousness of His 
presence, in accordance with His will, and in depend- 
ence on His help. 


vs.1-10) THE SECRET OF WELL-BEING 87 


Such a relation to God will certainly, and with no 
exceptions, issue in His ‘directing our paths, by which 
is meant that He will be not only our Guide, but also 
our Roadmaker, showing us the way and clearing 
obstacles from it. Calm certitude follows on willing- 
ness to accept God’s will, and whoever seeks only to go 
where God sends him will neither be left doubtful 
whither he should go, nor find his road blocked. 

The fourth couplet is, in its first part, in inverted 
parallelism with the third; for it begins with self- 
distrust, and proceeds thence to ‘fear of the Lord, 
which corresponds to, and is, in fact, but one phase of, 
trust in Him. It is the reverent awe which has no 
torment, and is then purest when faith is strongest. 
It necessarily leads to departing from evil. Morality 
has its roots in religion. There is no such magnet to 
draw men from sin as the happy fear of God, which is 
likewise faith. Whoever separates devcutness from 
purity of life, this teacher does not. He knows nothing 
of religion which permits association with iniquity- 
Such conduct will tend to physical well-being, and ina 
deeper sense will secure soundness of life. Godlessness 
is the true sickness. He only is healthy who has a 
healthy, because healed, soul. 

The fifth couplet appears at first as being a drop toa 
lower region. A regulation of the Mosaic law may 
strike some as out of place here. But it is to be 
remembered that our modern distinction of ceremonial 
and moral law was non-existent for Israel, and that 
the command has a wider application than to Jewish 
tithes. To ‘honour God with our substance’ is not 
necessarily to give it away for religious purposes, but 
to use it devoutly and as He approves. 

Christianity has more to say about the distribution, 





88 THE PROVERBS (cH. m1. 


as well as the acquisition, of wealth, than professing 
Christians, especially in commercial communities, prac- 
tically recognise. This precept grips us tight, and is 
much more than a ceremonial regulation. Many causes 
besides the devout use of property tend to wealth in 
our highly artificial state of society. The world tries 
to get it by shrewdness, unscrupulousness, and by 
many other vices which are elevated to the rank of 
virtues; but he who honours the Lord in getting and 
spending will generally have as much as his true needs 
and regulated desires require. 


THE GIFTS OF HEAVENLY WISDOM 


‘My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord; neither be weary of His cor- 
rection: 12. For whom the Lord loveth He correcteth; even as a father the son 
in whom he delighteth. 13. Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man 
that getteth understanding. 14. For the merchandise of it is better than the 
merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. 15. She is more precious 
than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. 
16. Length of days isin her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour. 
17. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. 18. She isa 
tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth 
her. 19. The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath He 
established the heavens. 20. By His knowledge the depths are broken up, and the 
clouds drop down the dew. 21. Myson, let not them depart from thine eyes: keep 
sound wisdom and discretion: 22. So shall they be life unto thy soul, and grace 
to thy neck. 23. Then shalt thou walk in thy way safely, and thy foot shall not 
stumble. 24. When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid: yea, thou shalt lie 
down, and thy sleep shall be sweet.’—PROVERBS iii. 11-24. 


THE repetition of the words ‘my son’ at the beginning 
of this passage marks a new section, which extends to 
verse 20, inclusively, another section being similarly 
marked as commencing in verse 21. The fatherly 
counsels of these early chapters are largely reiterations 
of the same ideas, being line upon line. ‘To write the 
same things to you, to me indeed is not grievous, but 
for you it is safe.’ Many strokes drive the nail home. 
Exhortations to get Wisdom, based upon the blessings 
she brings, are the staple of the whole. If we look 


ei o . 


ps ee Cea ee Pe ere ae 


* 


vs.11-24] GIFTS OF HEAVENLY WISDOM 89 


carefully at the section (vers. 11-20), we find in it a 
central core (vers. 13-18), setting forth the blessings 
which Wisdom gives, preceded by two verses, incul- 
cating the right acceptance of God’s chastisements 
which are one chief means of attaining Wisdom, and 
followed by two verses (vers. 19, 20), which exalt her as 
being divine as well as human. So the portraiture of 
her working in humanity is framed by a prologue and 
epilogue, setting forth two aspects of her relation to 
God; namely, that she is imparted by Him through 
the discipline of trouble, and that she dwells in His 
bosom and is the agent of His creative work. 

The prologue, then, points to sorrow and trouble, 
rightly accepted, as one chief means by which we 
acquire heavenly Wisdom: Note the profound insight 
into the meaning of sorrows. They are ‘instruction’ 
and ‘reproof. The thought of the Book of Job is here 
fully incorporated and assimilated. Griefs and pains 
are not tokens of anger, nor punishments of sin, but 
love-gifts meant to help to the acquisition of wisdom. 
They do not come because the sufferers are wicked, 
but in order to make them good or better. Tempests 
are meant to blow us into port. The lights are lowered 
in the theatre that fairer scenes may become visible on 
the thin screen between us and eternity. Other sup- 
ports are struck away that we may lean hard on God. 
The voice of all experience of earthly loss and bitter- 
ness is, ‘Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get 
Wisdom. God himself becomes our Schoolmaster, and 
through the voice of the human teacher we hear 
His deeper tones saying, ‘My son, despise not the 
chastening.’ 

Note, too, the assurance that all discipline is the fruit 
of Fatherly love. How many sad hearts in all ages 





90 _ ‘THE PROVERBS [om 


these few words have calmed and braced! How sharp 
a test of our childlike spirit our acceptance of them, 
when our own hearts are sore, is! How deep the peace 
which they bring when really believed! How far they 
go to solve the mystery of pain, and turn darkness into 
a solemn light! 

Note, further, that the words ‘despise’ and ‘be 
weary’ both imply rather rejection with loathing, and 
thus express unsubmissive impatience which gets no 
good from discipline. The beautiful rendering of the 
Septuagint, which has been made familiar by its adop- 
tion in Hebrews, makes the two words express two 
opposite faults. They ‘despise’ who steel their wills 
against the rod, and make as if they did not feel the 
pain; they ‘faint’ who collapse beneath the blows, 
which they feel so much that they lose sight of their 
purpose. Dogged insensibility and utter prostration 
are equally harmful. He who meets life’s teachings, 
which are a Father’s correction, with either, has little 
prospect of getting Wisdom. 

Then follows the main part of this section (vers. 13-18), 
—the praise of Wisdom as in herself most precious, 
and as bestowing highest good. ‘The man that findeth 
Wisdom’ reminds us of the peasant in Christ’s parable, 
who found treasure hidden in a field, and the ‘mer- 
chandise’ in verse 14, of the trader seeking goodly 
pearls. But the finding in verse 13 is not like the 
rustic’s in the parable, who was seeking nothing when 
a chance stroke of his plough or kick of his heel 
laid bare the glittering gold. It is the finding which 
rewards seeking. The figure of acquiring by trading, 
like that of the pearl-merchant in the companion 
parable, implies pains, effort, willingness to part with 
something in order to attain. 


ea 


pe ES nt ne gi = a8 


‘ears 


we 
# 








I a a a Te ee eS rg ee. ae 
a 


vs.11-24] GIFTS OF HEAVENLY WISDOM 91 


The nature of the price is not here in question. We 
know who has said, ‘I counsel thee to buy of Me gold 
tried in the fire’ We buy heavenly Wisdom when we 
surrender ourselves. The price is desire to possess, and 
willingness to accept as an undeserved, unearned gift. 
But that does not come into view in our lesson. Only 
this is strongly put in it—that this heavenly Wisdom 
outshines all jewels, outweighs all wealth, and is indeed 
the only true riches. ‘Rubies’ is probably rather to be 
taken as ‘corals, which seem to have been very highly 
prized by the Jews, and, no doubt, found their way to 
them from the Indian Ocean vid the Red Sea. The 
word rendered ‘things thou canst desire’ is better taken 
as meaning ‘jewels.’ 

This noble and conclusive depreciation of material 
wealth in comparison with Wisdom, which is not merely 
intellectual, but rests on the fear of the Lord, and is 
goodness as well as understanding, never needed preach- 
ing with more emphasis than in our day, when more 
and more the commercial spirit invades every region 
of life, and rich men are the aristocrats and envied 
types of success. When will England and America 
believe the religion which they profess, and adjust 
their estimates of the best things accordingly? How 
many so-called Christian parents would think their son 
mad if he said, ‘I do not care about getting rich; my 
goal is to be wise with God’s Wisdom’? How few of 
us order our lives on the footing of this old teacher's 
lesson, and act out the belief that Wisdom is more than 
wealth! The man who heaps millions together, and 
masses it, fails in life, however a vulgar world and a 
nominal church may admire and glorify him. The man 
who wins Wisdom succeeds, however bare may be his 
cupboard, and however people may pity him for having 





92 THE PROVERBS (OH. 111. 


failed in life, because he has not drawn prizes in the 
Devil’s lottery. His blank is a prize, and their prizes 
are blanks. This decisive subordination of material to 
spiritual good is too plainly duty and common sense to 
need being dwelt upon; but, alas! like a great many 
other most obvious, accepted truths, it is disregarded as 
universally as believed. 

The inseparable accompaniments of Wisdom are next 
eloquently described. The picture is the poetical cloth- 
ing of the idea that all material good will come to him 
who despises it all and clasps Wisdom to his heart. 
Some things flow from Wisdom possessed as usual 
consequences; some are inseparable from her. The 
gift in her right hand is length of days; that in her 
left, which, by its position, is suggested as inferior to 
the former, is wealth and honour—two goods which 
will attend the long life. No doubt such promises are 
to be taken with limitations; but there need be no 
doubt that, on the whole, loyal devotion to and real 
possession of heavenly Wisdom do tend in the direction 
of lengthening lives, which are by it delivered from 
vices and anxieties which cut many a career short, and 
of gathering round silver hairs reverence and troops of 
friends. 

These are the usual consequences, and may be fairly 
brought into view as secondary encouragements to 
seek Wisdom. But if she is sought for the sake of 
getting these attendant blessings, she will not be found, 
She must be loved for herself, not for her dowry, or 
she will not be won. At the same time, the over- 
strained and fantastic morality, which stigmatisesregard 
to the blessed results of a religious life as selfishness, 
finds no support in Scripture, as it has none in common 
sense. Would there were more of such selfishness! 


_—=<— ee on ann On, ae 
P ~ 


prev 


* as 


vs.11-24] GIFTS OF HEAVENLY WISDOM 93 


Sometimes Wisdom’s hands do not hold these out- 
ward gifts. But the connection between her and the 
next blessings spoken of is inseparable. Her ways are 
pleasantness and peace. ‘In keeping ’—not for keeping 
—‘her commandments is great reward.’ Inward de- 
light and deep tranquillity of heart attend every step 
taken in obedience to Wisdom. The course of conduct 
so prescribed will often involve painful crucifying of 
the lower nature, but its pleasure far outweighs its 
pain. It will often be strewn with sharp flints, or may 
even have red-hot ploughshares laid on it, as in old 
ordeal trials; but still it will be pleasant to the true 
self. Sin isa blunder as well as a crime, and enlightened 
self-interest would point out the same course as the 
highest law of Wisdom. In reality, duty and delight 
are co-extensive. They are two names for one thing— 
one taken from consideration of its obligation; the 
other, from observation of its issues. ‘Calm pleasures 
there abide. The only complete peace, which fills and 
quiets the whole man, comes from obeying Wisdom, 
or what is the same thing, from following Christ. 
There is no other way of bringing all our nature into 
accord with itself, ending the war between conscience 
and inclination, between flesh and spirit. There is no 
other way of bringing us into amity with all circum- 
stances, so that fortunate or adverse shall be recognised 
as good, and nothing be able to agitate us very much. 
Peace with ourselves, the world, and God, is always 
the consequence of listening to Wisdom. 

The whole fair picture is summed up in verse 18: ‘She 
is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her.’ This 
is a distinct allusion to the narrative of Genesis. The 
flaming sword of the cherub guard is sheathed, and 
access to the tree, which gives immortal life to those 





94 THE PROVERBS (oH. m1. 


who eat, is open to us. Mark how that great word 
‘life’ is here gathering to itself at least the beginnings 
of higher conceptions than those of simple existence. 
It is swelling like a bud, and preparing to open and 
disclose the perfect flower, the life which stands in the 
knowledge of God and the Christ whom He has sent. 
Jesus, the incarnate Wisdom, is Himself ‘the Tree of 
Life in the midst of the paradise of God.’ The condition 
of access to it is ‘laying hold’ by the outstretched hand 
of faith, and keeping hold with holy obstinacy of grip, 
in spite of all temptations to slack our grasp. That 
retaining is the condition of true blessedness. 

Verses 19 and 20 invest the idea of Wisdom with 
still loftier sublimity, since they declare that it is an 
attribute of God Himself by which creation came into 
being. The meaning of the writer is inadequately 
grasped if we take it to be only that creation shows 
God’s Wisdom. This personified Wisdom dwells with 
God, is the agent of creation, comes with invitations 
to men, may be possessed by them, and showers bless- 
ings on them. The planet Neptune was divined before 
it was discovered, by reason of perturbations in the 
movements of the exterior members of the system, 
unaccountable unless some great globe of light, hitherto 
unseen, were swaying them in their orbits. Do we not 
see here like influence streaming from the unrisen light 
of Christ? Personification prepares for Incarnation. 
There is One who has been with the Father from the 
beginning, by whom all things came into being, whose 
voice sounds to all, who is the Tree of Life, whom we 
may all possess, and with whose own peace we may be 
peaceful and blessed for evermore. 

Verses 21-24 belong to the next section of the great 
discourse or hymn. They add little to the preceding. 


vs. 11-24] GIFTS OF HEAVENLY WISDOM 95 


But we may observe the earnest exhortation to let 
wisdom and understanding be ever in sight. Eyes are 
apt to stray and clouds to hide the sun. Effort is 
needed to counteract the tendency to slide out of con- 
sciousness, which our weakness imposes on the most 
certain and important truths. A Wisdom which we 
do not think about is as good or as bad as non-existent 
for us. One prime condition of healthy spiritual life is 
the habit of meditation, thereby renewing our gaze 
upon the facts of God’s revelation and the bearing of 
these on our conduct. 

The blessings flowing from Wisdom are again dilated 
on, from a somewhat different point of view. She is 
the giver of life. And then she adorns the life she 
gives. One has seen homely faces so refined and 


_ glorified by the fair soul that shone through them as 


to be, ‘as it were, the face of an angel.’ Gracefulness 
should be the outward token of inward grace. Some 
good people forget that they are bound to ‘adorn the 
doctrine. But they who have drunk most deeply of 
the fountain of Wisdom will find that, like the fabled 
spring, its waters confer strange loveliness. Lives 
spent in communion with Jesus will be lovely, however 
homely their surroundings, and however vulgar eyes, 
taught only to admire staring colours, may find them 
dull. The world saw ‘no beauty that they should 
desire Him,’ in Him whom holy souls and heavenly 
angels and the divine Father deemed ‘fairer than the 
sons of men’! 

Safety and firm footing in active life will be ours if 
we walk in Wisdom’s ways. He who follows Christ’s 
footsteps will tread surely, and not fear foes. Quiet 
repose in hours of rest will be his. A day filled with 
happy service will be followed by a night full of calm 





96 THE PROVERBS (cH. Iv. 


slumber. ‘Whether we sleep or wake, we live’ with 
Him; and, if we do both, sleeping and waking will 
be blessed, and our lives will move on gently to the time 
when days and nights shall melt into one, and there will 
be no need for repose; for there will be no work that 
wearies and no hands that droop. The last lying down 
in the grave will be attended with no terrors. The last 
sleep there shall be sweet; for it will really be awaking 
to the full possession of the personal Wisdom, who is 
our Christ, our Life in death, our Heaven in heaven. 


THE TWO PATHS 


‘Hear, O my son, and receive my sayings; and the years of thy life shall be many. 
1l. I have taught thee in the way of wisdom; I have led thee in right paths. 
12. When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened ; and when thou runnest, 


thou shalt not stumble. 13. Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go: keep 


her; for sheis thylife. 14. Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in 
the way of evil men. 15. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away. 
16. For they sleep not, except they have done mischief; and their sleep is taken 
away, unless they cause some to fall. 17. For they eat the bread of wickedness, 
and drink the wine of violence. 18. But the path of the just is as the shining 
light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. 19. The way of the 
wicked is as darkness; they know not at what they stumble.’—PROVERBS iv. 10-19. 
THIS passage includes much more than temperance or 
any other single virtue. It is a perfectly general 
exhortation to that practical wisdom which walks in 
the path of righteousness. The principles laid down 
here are true in regard to drunkenness and abstinence, 
but they are intended to receive a wider application, 
and to that wider application we must first look. The 
theme is the old, familiar one of the two paths, and 
the aim is to recommend the better way by setting 
forth the contrasted effects of walking in it and in the 
other. 

The general call to listen in verse 10 is characteristi- 


cally enforced by the Old Testament assurance that 


ee Rk 


vs. 10-19] THE TWO PATHS 97 


obedience prolongs life. That is a New Testament 
truth as well; for there is nothing more certain than 
that a life in conformity with God’s will, which is the 
same thing as a life in conformity with physical laws, 
tends to longevity. The experience of any doctor will 
show that. Here in England we have statistics which 
prove that total abstainers are a long-lived people, 
and some insurance offices construct their tables 
accordingly. 

After that general call to listen comes, in verse 11, 
the description of the path in which long life is to be 
found. It is ‘the way of Wisdom ’—that is, that which 
Wisdom prescribes, and in which therefore it is wise to 
walk. It is always foolish to do wrong. The rough 
title of an old play is The Devil is an Ass, and if that 
is not true about him, it is absolutely true about those 
who listen to his lies. Sin is the stupidest thing in the 
universe, for it ignores the plainest facts, and never 
gets what it flings away so much to secure. 

Another aspect of the path is presented in the 
designation ‘ paths of uprightness, which seems to be 
equivalent to those which belong to, or perhaps which 
consist of, uprightness. The idea of straightness or 
evenness is the primary meaning of the word, and is, 
of course, appropriate to the image of a path. In the 
moral view, it suggests how much more simple and 
easy a course of rectitude is than one of sin. The one 
goes straight and unswerving to its end; the other is 
crooked, devious, intricate, and wanders from the true 
goal. A crooked road is a long road, and an up-and- 
down road is a tiring road. Wisdom’s way is straight, 
level, and steadily approaches its aim. 

In verse 13 the image of the path is dropped for the 
moment, and the picture of the way of uprightness and 

G 





98 THE PROVERBS (ou. rv. 


its travellers is translated into the plain exhortation to 
keep fast hold of ‘instruction,’ which is substantially 
equivalent to the queenly Wisdom of these early 
chapters of Proverbs. The earnestness of the repeated 
exhortations implies the strength of the forces that 
tend to sweep us, especially those of us who are young, 
from our grasp of that Wisdom. Hands become slack, 
and many a good gift drops from nerveless fingers; 
thieves abound who will filch away ‘instruction,’ if we 
do not resolutely hold tight by it. Who would walk 
through the slums of a city holding jewels with a 
careless grasp, and neyer looking at them? How 
many would he have left if he did? We do not need 
to do anything to lose instruction. If we will only do 
nothing to keep it, the world and our own hearts will 
make sure that we lose it. And if we lose it, we lose 
ourselves; for ‘she is thy life,’ and the mere bodily life, 
that is lived without her, is not worth calling the life 
of a man. 

Verses 14 to 17 give the picture of the other path, in 
terrible contrast with the preceding. It is noteworthy 
that, while in the former the designation was the ‘path 
of uprightness’ or of ‘wisdom,’ and the description 
therefore was mainly of the characteristics of the 
path, here the designation is ‘the path of the wicked, 
and the description is mainly of the travellers on it 
Righteousness was dealt with, as it were, in the 
abstract; but wickedness is too awful and dark to be 
painted thus, and is only set forth in the concrete, as 
seen in its doers. Now, it is significant that the first 
exhortation here is of anegative character. In contrast 
with the reiterated exhortations to keep wisdom, here 
are reiterated counsels to steer clear of evil. It is all 
about us, and we have to make a strong effort to keep 











vs. 10-19] THE TWO PATHS 99 


it at arm’s-length. ‘Whom resist’ isimperative. Truc, 
negative virtue is incomplete, but there will be no 
positive virtue without it. We must be accustomed to 
say ‘No, or we shall come to little good. An outer 
belt of firs is sometimes planted round a centre of more 
tender and valuable wood to shelter the young trees ; 
so we have to make a fence of abstinences round our 
plantation of positive virtues. The decalogue is mostly 
prohibitions. ‘So did not I, because of the fear of 
God’ must be our motto. In this light, entire abstin- 
ence from intoxicants is seen to be part of the ‘ way of 
Wisdom.’ It is one, and, in the present state of England 
and America, perhaps the most important, of the ways 
by which we can ‘turn from’ the path of the wicked 
and ‘ pass on.’ 

The picture of the wicked in verses 16 and 17 is that 
of very grossly criminalsinners. They are only content 
when they have done harm, and delight in making 
others as bad as themselves. But, diabolical as such a 
disposition is, one sees it only too often in full opera- 
tion. How many a drunkard or impure man finds a 
fiendish pleasure in getting hold of some innocent lad, 
and ‘putting him up to a thing or two, which means 
teaching him the vices from which the teacher has 
ceased to get much pleasure, and which he has to spice 


_ with the condiment of seeing an unaccustomed sinner’s 


eagerness! Such people infest our streets, and there is 
only one way for a young man to be safe from them,— 
‘avoid, pass not by, turn from, and pass on. The 
reference to ‘bread’ and ‘wine’ in verse 17 seems 
simply to mean that the wicked men’s living is won by 
their ‘ wickedness, which procures bread, and by their 
‘violence, which brings them wine. It is the way by 
which these are obtained that is culpable. We may 


100 THE PROVERBS (cH. Iv. 


contrast this foul source of a degraded living with 
verse 13, where ‘instruction’ is set forth as ‘ the life’ of 
the upright. 

Verses 18 and 19 bring more closely together the two 
paths, and set them in final, forcible contrast. The 
phrase ‘the perfect day’ might be rendered, vividly 
though clumsily, ‘the steady of the day ’—that is, noon, 
when the sun seems to stand still in the meridian. So 
the image compares the path of the just to the growing 
brightness of morning dawn, becoming more and more 
fervid and lustrous, till the climax of an Eastern 
midday. No more sublime figure of the continuous pro- 
gress in goodness, brightness, and joy, which is the 
best reward of walking in the paths of uprightness, 
can be imagined; and it is as true as it is sublime. 
Blessed they who in the morning of their days begin to 
walk in the way of wisdom ; for, in most cases, years 
will strengthen their uprightness, and to that progress 
there will be no termination, nor will the midday sun 
have to decline westward to diminishing splendour 
or dismal setting, but that noontide glory will be en- 
hanced, and made eternal in a new heaven. The 
brighter the light, the darker the shadow. That blaze 
of growing glory, possible for us all, makes the tragic 
gloom to which evil men condemn themselves the 
thicker and more doleful, as some dungeon in an 
Eastern prison seems pitch dark to one coming in from 
the blaze outside. ‘How great is that darkness!’ It 
is the darkness of sin, of ignorance, of sorrow, and 
what adds deeper gloom to it is that every soul that 
sits in that shadow of death might have been shining, 
a sun, in the spacious heaven of God's love. 


MONOTONY AND CRISES 


When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened; and when thou runnest, 
thou shalt not stumble..—PROVERBS iv. 12. 


THE old metaphor likening life to a path has many 
felicities in it. It suggests constant change, it suggests 
continuous progress in one direction, and that all our 
days are linked together, and are not isolated frag- 
ments; and it suggests an aim and an end. So we find 
it perpetually in this Book of Proverbs. Here the 
‘way’ has a specific designation, ‘the way of Wisdom’ 
—that is to say, the way which Wisdom teaches, and 
the way on which Wisdom accompanies us, and the way 
which leads to Wisdom. Now, these two clauses of my 
text are not merely an instance of the peculiar feature 
of Hebrew poetry called parallelism, in which two 
clauses, substantially the same, occur, but with a little 
pleasing difference. ‘When thou goest’—that is, the 
monotonous tramp, tramp, tramp. of slow walking 
along the path of an uneventful daily life, the hum- 
drum ‘one foot up and another foot down’ which 
makes the most of our days. ‘When thou runnest’ 
—that points to the crises, the sudden spurts, the 
necessarily brief bursts of more than usual energy 
and effort and difficulty. And about both of them, the 
humdrum and the exciting, the monotonous and the 
startling, the promise comes that if we walk in the 
path of Wisdom we shall not get disgusted with the 
one and we shall not be overwhelmed by the other. 
‘When thou walkest, thy steps shall not be straitened ; 
when thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble.’ 

But before I deal with these two clauses specifically, 


let me recall to you the condition, and the sole con- 
101 





102 THE PROVERBS [cH. Iv. 


dition, upon which either of them can be fulfilled in our 
daily lives. The book from which my text is taken is 
probably one of the very latest in the Old Testament, 
and you catch in it a very significant and marvellous 
development of the Old Testament thought. For there 
rises up, out of these early chapters of the Book of 
Proverbs, that august and serene figure of the queenly 
Wisdom, which is more than a personification and is 
less than a person and a prophecy. It means more 
than the wise man that spoke it saw; it means for us 
Christ, ‘the Power of God and the Wisdom of God.’ 
And so instead of keeping ourselves merely to the word 
of the Book of Proverbs, we must grasp the thing that 
shines through the word, and realise that the writer's 
visions can only become realities when the serene and 
august Wisdom that he saw shimmering through the 
darkness took to itself a human Form, and ‘the Word 
became flesh, and dwelt among us.’ 

With that heightening of the meaning of the phrase, 
‘the path of Wisdom’ assumes a heightened meaning 
too, for it is the path of the personal Wisdom, the In- 
carnate Wisdom, Christ Himself. And what does it 
then come to be to obey this command to walk in the 
way of Wisdom? Put it into three sentences. Let the 
Christ who is not only wise, but Wisdom, choose your 
path, and be sure that by the submission of your will 
all your paths are His, and not only yours. Make His 
path yours by following in His steps, and do in your 
_ place what you think Christ would have done if He had 
been there. Keep company with Him on the road. If 
we will do these three things—if we will say to Him, 
‘Lord, when Thou sayest go, I go; when Thou biddest 
me come, I come; I am Thy slave, and I rejoice in the 
bondage more than in all licentious liberty, and what 


v.12] MONOTONY AND CRISES 103 


Thou biddest me do, I do’—if you will further say, ‘As 
Thou art,so am I in the world’—and if you will further 
say, ‘Leave me not alone, and let me cling to Thee on 
the road, as a little child holds on by her mother’s skirt 
or her father’s hand,’ then, and only then, will you walk 


_ in the path of Wisdom. 


Now, then, these three things—submission of will, 
conformity of conduct, closeness of companionship— 
these three things being understood, let us look for a 
moment at the blessings that this text promises, and 
first at the promise for long uneventful stretches of 
our daily life. That, of course, is mainly the largest 
proportion of all our lives. Perhaps nine-tenths at 


least of all our days and years fall under the terms of 


this first promise, ‘When thou walkest. For many 
miles there comes nothing particular, nothing at all 
exciting, nothing new, nothing to break the plod, plod, 
plod along the road. Everything is as it was yesterday, 
and the day before that, and as it will be to-morrow, 
and the day after that, in all probability. ‘The trivial 
round, the common task’ make up by far the largest per- 
centage of our lives. It is as in wine, the immense 
proportion of it is nothing but water, and only a small 
proportion of alcohol is diffused through the great 
mass of the tamer liquid. 

Now, then, if Jesus Christ is not to help us in the 
monotony of our daily lives, what, in the name of 
common sense, is His help good for? If it is not true 
that He will be with us, not only in the moments of 
crisis, but in the long commonplace hours, we may as 
well have no Christ at all, for all that Ican see. Unless 
the trivial is His field, there is very little field for Him, 
in your life or mine. And so it should come to all of us 
who have to take up this daily burden of small, mono- 





104 THE PROVERBS [cH. Iv. 


tonous, constantly recurring, and therefore often 
wearisome, duties, as even a more blessed promise 
than the other one, that ‘when thou walkest, thy steps 
shall not be straitened.’ 

I remember hearing of a man that got so disgusted 
with having to dress and undress himself every day 
that he committed suicide to escape from the necessity. 
That is a very extreme form of the feeling that comes 
over us all sometimes, when we wake in a morning and 
look before us along the stretch of dead level, which is 
a great deal more wearisome when it lasts long than 
are the cheerful vicissitudes of up hill and down dale. 
We all know the deadening influence of a habit. 
We all know the sense of disgust that comes over us 
at times, and of utter weariness, just because we have 
been doing the same things day after day for so long. 
I know only one infallible way of preventing the 
common from becoming commonplace, of preventing 
the small from becoming trivial, of preventing the 
familiar from becoming contemptible, and it is to link 
it all to Jesus Christ, and to say, ‘For Thy sake, and 
unto Thee, I do this’; then, not only will the rough 
places become plain, and the crooked things straight, 
and not only will the mountains be brought low, but 
the valleys of the commonplace will be exalted. ‘Thy 
steps shall not be straitened.’ ‘I will make his feet as 
hind’s feet,’ says one of the old prophets. What a 
picture of light, buoyant, graceful movement that is! 
And each of us may have that, instead of the grind, 
grind, grind! tramp, tramp, tramp! along the level and 
commonplace road of our daily lives, if we will. Walk 
in the path of Christ, with Christ, towards Christ, and 
‘thy steps shall not be straitened.’ 

Now, there is another aspect of this same promise— 


v. 12] MONOTONY AND CRISES 105 


viz. if we thus are in the path of Incarnate Wisdom, 
we shall not feel the restrictions of the road to be 
restraints. ‘Thy steps shall not be straitened’; although 
there is a wall on either side, and the road is the 
narrow way that leads to life, it is broad enough for 
the sober man, because he goes in a straight line, and 
does not need half the road to roll aboutin. The limits 
which love imposes, and the limits which love accepts, 
are not narrowing. ‘I will walk at liberty, for—I do 
as I like. No! that is slavery; but,‘I will walk at 
liberty, for I keep Thy precepts’; and I do not want to 
go vagrantising at large, but limit myself thankfully 
to the way which Thou dost mark out. ‘Thy steps 
shall not be straitened.’ So much for the first of these 
promises. 

Now what about the other one? ‘When thou run- 
nest, thou shalt not stumble.’ 

As I have said, the former promise applies to the 
hours and the years of life. The latter applies to but 
a few moments of each man’s life. Cast your thoughts 
back over your own days, and however changeful, 
eventful, perhaps adventurous, and as we people call 
it, romantic, some parts of our lives may have been, 
yet for all that you can put the turning-points, the 
crises that have called for great efforts, and the gather- 
ing of yourselves up, and the calling forth of all your 
powers to do and to dare, you can put them all inside 
of a week, in most cases. ‘When thou runnest, thou 
shalt not stumble.’ The greater the speed, the greater 
the risk of stumbling over some obstacle in the way. 
We all know how many men there are that do very 
well in the uneventful commonplaces of life, but bring 
them face to face with some great difficulty or some 
great trial, and there is a dismal failure. Jesus Christ 





106 THE PROVERBS (cH. Iv. 


is ready to make us fit for anything in the way of 
difficulty, in the way of trial, that can come storming 
upon us from out of the dark. And He will make us 
so fit if we follow the injunctions to which I have 
already been referring. Without His help it is almost 
certain that when we have to run, our ankles will give, 
or there will be a stone in the road that we never 
thought of, and the excitement will sweep us away 
from principle, and we shall lose our hold on Him; and 
then it is all up with us. 

There is a wonderful saying in one of the prophets, 
which uses this same metaphor of my text with a 
difference, where it speaks of the divine guidance of 
Israel as being like that of a horse in the wilderness. 
Fancy the poor, nervous, tremulous creature trying to 
keep its footing upon the smooth granite slabs of 
Sinai. Travellers dare not take their horses on 
mountain journeys, because they are highly nervous 
and are not sure-footed enough. And, so says the old 
prophet, that gracious Hand will be laid on the bridle, 
and hold the nervous creature's head up as it goes 
sliding over the slippery rocks, and so He will bring it 
down to rest in the valley. ‘Now unto Him that is 
able to keep us from stumbling,’ as is the true render- 
ing, ‘and to present us faultless ...be glory. Trust 
Him, keep near Him, let Him choose your way, and try 
to be like Him in it; and whatever great occasions may 
arise in your lives, either of sorrow or of duty, you will 
be equal to them. 

But remember the virtue that comes out victorious 
in the crisis must have been nourished and cultivated 
in the humdrum moments. For it is no time to make 
one’s first acquaintance with Jesus Christ when the 
eyeballs of some ravenous wild beast are staring into 





v. 12] MONOTONY AND CRISES 107 


ours, and its mouth is open to swallow us. Unless He 
has kept our feet from being straitened in the quiet 
walk, He will not be able to keep us from stumbling in 
the vehement run. 

One word more. This same distinction is drawn by 
one of the prophets, who adds another clause to it. 
Isaiah, or the author of the second portion of the 
book which goes by his name, puts in wonderful 
connection the two thoughts of my text with analo- 
gous thoughts in regard to God, when he says, ‘ Hast 
thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the ever- 
lasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of 
the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?’ and 
immediately goes on to say, ‘They that wait on the 
Lord shall renew their strength. They shall run and 
not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.’ So it 
is from God, the unfainting and the unwearied, that 
the strength comes which makes our steps buoyant 
with energy amidst the commonplace, and steadfast 
and established at the crises of our lives. But before 
these two great promises is put another one: ‘They 
shall mount up with wings as eagles,’ and therefore 
both the other become possible. That is to say, fellow- 
ship with God in the heavens, which is made possible 
on earth by communion with Christ, is the condition 
both of the unwearied running and of unfainting walk- 
ing. If we will keep in the path of Christ, He will take 
care of the commonplace dreary tracts and of the brief 
moments of strain and effort, and will bring us at last 
where He has gone, if, looking unto Him, we ‘run with 
patience the race,’ and walk with cheerfulness the road, 
‘that is set before us.’ 


FROM DAWN TO NOON 


‘The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto 
the perfect day..—PROVERBs iv. 18. 


‘Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their father.’ 
—MATT. xiii. 43. 


THE metaphor common to both these texts is not 
infrequent throughout Scripture. In one of the oldest 
parts of the Old Testament, Deborah’s triumphal song, 
we find, ‘Let all them that love Thee be as the sun 
when he goeth forth in his might.’ In one of the latest 
parts of the Old Testament, Daniel’s prophecy, we read, 
‘They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the 
firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness 
as the stars for ever and ever.’ Then in the New Testa- 
ment we have Christ’s comparison of His servants to 
light, and the great promise which I have read as my 
second text. The upshot of them all is this—the most 
radiant thing on earth is the character of a good man. 
The world calls men of genius and intellectual force its 
lights. The divine estimate, which is the true one, 
confers the name on righteousness. 

But my first text follows out another analogy; not 
only brightness, but progressive brightness, is the 
characteristic of the righteous man. 

We are to think of the strong Eastern sun, whose 
blinding light steadily increases till the noontide. ‘The 
perfect day’ is a somewhat unfortunate translation. 
What is meant is the point of time at which the day 
culminates, and for a moment, the sun seems to stand 
steady, up in those southern lands, in the very zenith, 
raying down ‘the arrows that fly by noonday.’ The 
text does not go any further, it does not talk about the 
sad diminution of the afternoon. The parallel does 


not hold; though, if we consult appearance and sense 
108 


v. 18] FROM DAWN TO NOON 109 


alone, it seems to hold only too well. For, sadder than 
the setting of the suns, which rise again to-morrow, is 
the sinking into darkness of death, from which there 
seems to be no emerging. But my second text comes 
in to tell us that death is but as the shadow of eclipse 
which passes, and with it pass obscuring clouds and 
envious mists, and ‘ then shall the righteous blaze forth 
like the sun in their Heavenly Father’s kingdom.’ 

And so the two texts speak to us of the progressive 
brightness, and the ultimate, which is also the pro- 
gressive, radiance of the righteous. 

I. In looking at them together, then, I would notice, 
first, what a Christian life is meant to be. 

I must not linger on the lovely thoughts that are 
suggested by that attractive metaphor of life. It must 
be enough, for our present purpose, to say that the 
light of the Christian life, like its type in the heavens, 
may be analysed into three beams—purity, knowledge, 
blessedness. And these three, blended together, make 
the pure whiteness of a Christian soul. 

But what I wish rather to dwell upon is the other 
thought, the intention that every Christian life should 
be a life of increasing lustre, uninterrupted, and the 
natural result of increasing communion with, and 
conformity to, the very fountain itself of heavenly 
radiance. 

Remember how emphatically, in all sorts of ways, 
progress is laid down in Scripture as the mark of 
a religious life. There is the emblem of my text. 
There is our Lord’s beautiful one of vegetable growth: 
‘First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the 
ear. There is the other metaphor of the stages of 
human life, ‘babes in Christ, young men in Him, old 
men and fe’ .ers. There is the metaphor of the growth 


110 THE PROVERBS [cH. Iv. 


of the body. There is the metaphor of the gradual 
building up of a structure. We are to ‘edify ourselves 
together, and to ‘build ourselves up on our most holy 
faith.’ There is the other emblem of a race—continual 
advance as the result of continual exertion, and the 
use of the powers bestowed upon us. 

And so in all these ways, and in many others that 
I need not now touch upon, Scripture lays it down as 
a rule that life in the highest region, like life in the 
lowest, is marked by continual growth. It is so in 
regard to all other things. Continuity in any kind of 
practice gives increasing power inthe art. The artisan, 
the blacksmith with his hammer, the skilled artificer at 
his trade, the student at his subject, the good man in 
his course of life, and the bad man in his, do equally 
show that use becomes second nature. And so, in pass- 
ing, let me say what incalculable importance there is in 
our getting habit, with all its mystical power to mould 
life, on the side of righteousness, and of becoming 
accustomed to do good, and so being unfamiliar with 
evil. 

Let me remind you, too, how this intention of con- 
tinuous growth is marked by the gifts that are be- 
stowed upon us in Jesus Christ. He gives us—and it 
is by no means the least of the gifts that He bestows— 
an absolutely unattainable aim as the object of our 
efforts. For He bids us not only be ‘perfect, as our 
Father in Heaven is perfect, but He bids us be entirely 
conformed to His own Self. The misery of men is that 
they pursue aims so narrow and so shabby that they 
can be attained, and are therefore left behind, to sink 
hull down on the backward horizon. But to have 
before us an aim which is absolutely unreachable, 
instead of being, as ignorant people say, an occasion of 


v. 18] FROM DAWN TO NOON 111 


despair and of idleness, is, on the contrary, the very 
salt of life. It keeps us young, it makes hope immortal, 
it emancipates from lower pursuits, it diminishes the 
weight of sorrows, it administers an anesthetic to 
every pain. If you want to keep life fresh, seek for 
that which you can never fully find. 

Christ gives us infinite powers to reach that un- 
attainable aim, for He gives us access to all His own 
fullness, and there is more in His storehouses than we 
can ever take, not to say more than we can ever hope 
to exhaust. And therefore, because of the aim that is 
set before us, and because of the powers that are be- 
stowed upon us to reach it, there is stamped upon 
every Christian life unmistakably as God’s purpose and 
ideal concerning it, that it should for ever and for 
ever be growing nearer and nearer, as some ascending 
spiral that ever circles closer and closer, and yet never 
absolutely unites with the great central Perfection 
which is Himself. 

So, brethren, for every one of us, if we are Christian 
people at all, ‘this is the will of God, even your 
perfection.’ 

II. Consider the sad contrast of too many Christian 
lives. 

I would not speak in terms that might seem to be 
reproach and scolding. The matter is far too serious, 
the disease far too widespread, to need or to warrant 
any exaggeration. But, dear brethren, there are many 
so-called and, in a fashion, really Christian people to 
whom Christ and His work are mainly, if not exclu- 
sively, the means of escaping the consequences of sin— 
a kind of ‘fire-escape. And to very many it comes as 
a new thought, in so far as their practical lives are 
concerned, that these ought to be lives of steadily 





112 THE PROVERBS 


increasing deliverance from the love and the power of 
sin, and steadily increasing appropriation and mani- 
festation of Christ’s granted righteousness. There are, 
I think, many of us from whom the very notion of 
progress has faded away. I am sure there are some of 
us who were a great deal farther on on the path of the 
Christian life years ago, when we first felt that Christ 
was anything to us, than we are to-day. ‘ When for 
the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one 
teach you which be the first principles of the oracles 
of God.’ 

There is an old saying of one of the prophets that a 
child would die a hundred years old, which in a very 
sad sense is true about very many folk within the pale 
of the Christian Church who are seventy-year-old 
babes still, and will die so. Suns ‘growing brighter 
and brighter until the noonday!’ Ah! there are many 
of us who are a great deal more like those strange 
variable stars that sometimes burst out in the heavens 
into a great blaze, that brings them up to the bright- 
ness of stars of the first magnitude, for a day or 
two; and then they dwindle until they become little 
specks of light that the telescope can hardly see. 

And there are hosts of us who are instances, if not of 
arrested, at any rate of unsymmetrical, development. 
The head, perhaps, is cultivated; the intellectual 
apprehension of Christianity increases, while the 
emotional, and the moral, and the practical part of it 
are all neglected. Or the converse may be the case; 
and we may be full of gush and of good emotion, and of 
fervour when we come to worship or to pray, and our 
lives may not be a hair the better for it all. Or there 
may be a disproportion because of an exclusive atten- 
tion to conduct and the practical side of Christianity, 


v. 18] FROM DAWN TO NOON 113 


while the rational side of it, which should be the basis 
of all, and the emotional side of it, which should be the 
driving power of all, are comparatively neglected. 

So, dear brethren! what with interruptions, what 
with growing by fits and starts, and long, dreary 
winters like the Arctic winters, coming in between the 
two or three days of rapid, and therefore brief and 
unwholesome, development, we must all, I think, take 
to heart the condemnation suggested by this text 
when we compare the reality of our lives with the 
divine intention concerning them. Let us ask our- 
selves, ‘Have I more command over myself than I had 
twenty years ago? Do I live nearer Jesus Christ to- 
day than I did yesterday? Have I more of His Spirit 
inme? AmI growing? Would the people that know 
me best say that I am growing in the grace and know- 
ledge of my Lord and Saviour?’ Astronomers tell us 
that there are dark suns, that have burnt themselves 
out, and are wandering unseen through the skies. I 
wonder if there are any extinguished suns of that sort 
listening to me at this moment. 

III. How the divine purpose concerning us may be 
realised by us. 

Now the Alpha and the Omega of this, the one 
means which includes all other, is laid down by Jesus 
Christ Himself in another metaphor when He said, 
‘Abide in Me, and I in you; so shall ye bring forth 
much fruit.’ Our path will brighten, not because of 
any radiance in ourselves, but in proportion as we 
draw nearer and nearer to the Fountain of heavenly 
radiance. 

The planets that move round the sun, further away 
than we are on earth, get less of its light and heat; 
and those that circle around it within the limits of 

H 





114 THE PROVERBS -[CH. IV, 


our orbit, get proportionately more. The nearer we 
are to Him, the more we shall shine. The sun shines 
by its own light, drawn indeed from the shrinkage of its 
mass, so that it gives away its very life in warming 
and illuminating its subject-worlds. But we shine only. 
by reflected light, and therefore the nearer we keep to 
Him the more shall we be radiant. 

That keeping in touch with Jesus Christ is mainly to 
be secured by the direction of thought, and love, and 
trust to Him. If we follow close upon Him we shall 
not walk in darkness. It is to be secured and main- 
tained very largely by what I am afraid is much 
neglected by Christian people of all sorts nowadays, 
and that is the devotional use of their Bibles. That is 
the food by which we grow. It is to be secured and 
maintained still more largely by that which I, again, 
am afraid is but very imperfectly attained to by Chris- 
tian people now, and that is, the habit of prayer. It 
is to be secured and maintained, again, by the honest 
conforming of our lives, day by day, to the present 
amount of our knowledge of Him and of His will. 
Whosoever will make all his life the manifestation of 
his belief, and turn all his creed into principles of 
action, will grow both in the comprehensiveness, and 
in the depths of his Christian character. ‘Ye are the 
light in the Lord.’ Keep in Him, and you will become 
brighter and brighter. So shall we ‘go from strength 
to strength, till we appear before God in Zion.’ 

IV. Lastly, what brighter rising will follow the earthly 
setting? 

My second text comes in here. Beauty, intellect, 
power, goodness; all go down into the dark. The 
sun sets, and there is left a sad and fading glow in the 
darkening pensive sky, which may recall the vanished 


v.18] FROM DAWN TO NOON 115 


light for a little while to a few faithful hearts, 
but steadily passes into the ashen grey of forgetfulness. 

But ‘then shall the righteous blaze forth like the sun, 
in their Heavenly Father’s kingdom.’ The momentary 
setting is but apparent. And ere it is well accom- 
plished, a new sun swims into the ‘ampler ether, the 
diviner air’ of that future life, ‘and with new spangled 
beams, flames in the forehead of the morning sky.’ 

The reason for that inherent brightness suggested in 
our second text is that the soul of the righteous man 
passes from earth into a region out of which we ‘gather 
all things that offend, and them that do iniquity.’ 
There are other reasons for it, but that is the one 
which our Lord dwells on. Or, to put it into modern 
scientific language, environment corresponds to char- 
acter. So, when the clouds have rolled away, and no 
more mists from the undrained swamps of selfishness 
and sin and animal nature rise up to hide the radiance, 
there shall be a fuller flood of light poured from the 
re-created sun. 

That brightness thus promised has for its highest 
and most blessed character that it is conformity to the 
Lord Himself. For, as you may remember, the last 
use of this emblem that we find in Scripture refers not 
to the servant but to the Master, whom His beloved 
disciple in Apocalyptic vision saw, with His ‘counten- 
ance as the sun shining in his strength.’ Thus ‘we 
shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.’ And 
therefore that radiance of the sainted dead is progres- 
sive, too. For it has an infinite fulness to draw upon, 
and the soul that is joined to Jesus Christ, and derives 
its lustre from Him, cannot die until it has outgrown 
Jesus and emptied God. The sun will one day be 
a dark, cold ball. We shall outlast it. 


a 
4 , 
~s » 


116 THE PROVERBS [on. Iv. 


But, brethren, remember that it is only those who 
here on earth have progressively appropriated the 
brightness that Christ bestows who have a right to 
reckon on that better rising. It is contrary to all pro- 
bability to believe that the passage from life can 
change the ingrained direction and set of a man’s 
nature. We know nothing that warrants us in affirm- 
ing that death can revolutionise character. Do not 
trust your future to such a dim peradventure. Here 
is a plain truth. They who on earth are as ‘the shining 
light that shineth more and more unto the perfect 
day, shall, beyond the shadow of eclipse, shine on as 
the sun does, behind the opaque, intervening body, all 
unconscious of what looks to mortal eyes on earth an 
eclipse, and ‘shall blaze out like the sun in their 
Heavenly Father’s kingdom.’ For all that we know 
and are taught by experience, religious and moral dis- 
tinctions are eternal. ‘He that is righteous, let him be 
righteous still; and he that is filthy, let him be filthy 
still.’ 


KEEPING AND KEPT 


‘Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.’— 
PROVERBS iv. 23. 


‘Kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.’—1 PETER i. 5. 
THE former of these texts imposes a stringent duty, 
the latter promises divine help to perform it. The 
relation between them is that between the Law and 
the Gospel. The Law commands, the Gospel gives 
power to obey. The Law pays no attention to man’s 
weakness, and points no finger to the source of 
strength. Its office is to set clearly forth what we 
ought to be, not to aid us in becoming so. ‘Here is 


v. 23] KEEPING AND KEPT 117 


your duty, do it’ is, doubtless, a needful message, but 
it is a chilly one, and it may well be doubted if it 
ever rouses a soul to right action. Moralists have 
hammered away at preaching self-restraint and a close 
watch over the fountain of actions within from the 
beginning, but their exhortations have little effect 
unless they can add to their icy injunctions the 
warmth of the promise of our second text, and point 
to a divine Keeper who will make duty possible. We 
must be kept by God, if we are ever to succeed in 
keeping our wayward hearts. 

I. Without our guarding our hearts, no noble life 
is possible. 

The Old Testament psychology differs from our 
popular allocation of certain faculties to bodily organs. 
We use head and heart, roughly speaking, as being 
respectively the seats of thought and of emotion. But 
the Old Testament locates in the heart the centre of 
personal being. It is not merely the home of the 
affections, but the seat of will, moral purpose. As 
this text says, ‘the issues of life’ flow from it in all 
the multitudinous variety of their forms. The stream 
parts into many heads, but it has one fountain. To 
the Hebrew thinkers the heart was the indivisible, 
central unity which manifested itself in the whole 
of the outward life. ‘As a man thinketh in his heart, 
so is he.’ The heart is the man. And that personal 
centre has a moral character which comes to light in, 
and gives unity and character to, all his deeds. 

That solemn thought that every one of us has a 
definite moral character, and that our deeds are not 
an accidental set of outward actions but flow from 
an inner fountain, needs to be driven home to our 
consciences, for most of the actions of most men are 





a : 
‘ 
: 


r 
ret 


118 THE PROVERBS [cH. IV. 


done so mechanically, and reflected on so little by the 
doers, that the conviction of their having any moral 
character at all, or of our incurring any responsibility 
for them, is almost extinct in us, unless when some- 
thing startles conscience into protest. 

It is this shrouded inner self to which supreme care 
is to be directed. All noble ethical teaching concurs 
in this—that a man who seeks to be right must keep, 
in the sense both of watching and of guarding, his 
inner self. Conduct is more easily regulated than 
character—and less worth regulating. It avails little 
to plant watchers on the stream half way to the sea. 
Control must be exercised at the source, if it is to be 
effectual. The counsel of our first text is a common- 
place of all wholesome moral teaching since the be- 
ginning of the world. The phrase ‘with all diligence’ 
is literally ‘above all guarding,’ and energetically 
expresses the supremacy of this keeping. It should 
be the foremost, all-pervading aim of every wise man 
who would not let his life run to waste. It may 
be turned into more modern language, meaning just 
what this ancient sage meant, if we put it as, ‘Guard 
thy character with more carefulness than thou dost 
thy most precious possessions, for it needs continual 
watchfulness, and, untended, will go to rack and ruin.’ 
The exhortation finds a response in every heart, and 
may seem too familiar and trite to bear dwelling on, 
but we may be allowed to touch lightly on one or 
two of the plain reasons which enforce it on every 
man who is not what Proverbs very unpolitely calls 
‘a, fool.’ 

That guarding is plainly imposed as necessary, by 
the very constitution of our manhood. Our nature is 
evidently not a republic, but a monarchy. It is full 


v. 23] KEEPING AND KEPT 119 


of blind impulses, and hungry desires, which take no 
heed of any law but their own satisfaction. If the 
reins are thrown on the necks of these untamed horses, 
they will drag the man to destruction. They are only 
safe when they are curbed and bitted, and held well 
in. Then there are tastes and inclinations which need 
guidance and are plainly meant to be subordinate. 
The will is to govern all the lower self, and conscience 
is to govern the will. Unmistakably there are parts 
. of every man’s nature which are meant to serve, and 
parts which are appointed to rule, and to let the 
servants usurp the place of the rulers is to bring about 
as wild a confusion within as the Ecclesiast lamented 
that he had seen in the anarchic times when he wrote— 
princes walking and beggars on horseback. As George 
Herbert has it— 


* Give not thy humours way ; 
God gave them to thee under lock and key.’ 


Then, further, that guarding is plainly imperative, 
because there is an outer world which appeals to our 
needs and desires, irrespective altogether of right and 
wrong and of the moral consequences of gratifying 
these. Put a loaf before a starving man and his im- 
pulse will be to clutch and devour it, without regard 
to whether it is his or no. Show any of our animal 
propensities its appropriate food, and it asks no ques- 
tions as to right or wrong, but is stirred to grasp its 
natural food. And even the higher and nobler parts 
_of our nature are but too apt to seek their gratification 
without having the license of conscience for doing so, 
and sometimes in defiance of its plain prohibitions. It 
is never safe to trust the guidance of life to tastes, 
inclinations, or to anything but clear reason, set in 


120 THE PROVERBS (cH. Iv. 


motion by calm will, and acting under the approbation 
of ‘the Lord Chief Justice, Conscience.’ 

But again, seeing that the world has more evil than 
good in it, the keeping of the heart will always consist 
rather in repelling solicitations to yielding to evil. In 
short, the power and the habit of sternly saying ‘No’ 
to the whole crowd of tempters is always the main 
secret of a noble life. ‘He that hath no rule over his 
own spirit is like a city broken down and without walls.’ 

II. There is no effectual guarding unless God guards. 

The counsel in Proverbs is not mere toothless moral 
commonplace, but is associated, in the preceding 
chapter, with fatherly advice to ‘let thine heart keep 
my commandments’ and to ‘trust in the Lord with 
all thine heart.’ The heart that so trusts will be safely 
guarded, and only such a heart will be. The inherent 
weakness of all attempts at self-keeping is that keeper 
and kept being one and the same personality, the 
more we need to be kept the less able we are to 
effect it. If in the very garrison traitors, how shall 
the fortress be defended? If, then, we are to exercise 
an effectual guard over our characters and control 
over our natures, we must have an outward standard 
of right and wrong which shall not be deflected by 
variations in our temperature. We need a fixed light 
to steer towards, which is stable on the stable shore, 
and is not tossing up and down on our decks. We 
shall cleanse our way only when we ‘take heed 
thereto, according to Thy word.’ For even God's vice- 
roy within, the sovereign conscience, can be warped, 
perverted, silenced, and is not immune from the spread- 
ing infection of evil. When it turns to God, as a 
mirror to the sun, it is irradiated and flashes bright 
illumination into dark corners, but its power depends 


\ { 


v. 23] KEEPING AND KEPT 121 


on its being thus lit by radiations from the very 
Light of Life. And if we are ever to have a coercive 
power over the rebellious powers within, we must have 
God’s power breathed into us, giving grip and energy 
to all the good within, quickening every lofty desire, 
satisfying every aspiration that feels after Him, cowing 
all our evil and being the very self of ourselves. 

We need an outward motive which will stimulate 
and stir to effort. Our wills are lamed for good, and 
the world has strong charms that appeal to us. And 
if we are not to yield to these, there must be some- 
where a stronger motive than any that the sorceress 
world has in its stores, that shall constrainingly draw 
us to ways that, because they tend upward, and yield 
no pabulum for the lower self, are difficult for sluggish 
feet. To the writer of this Book of Proverbs the 
name of God bore in it such a motive. To us the 
name of Jesus, which is Love, bears a yet mightier 
appeal, and the motive which lies in His death for us 
is strong enough, and it alone is strong enough, to 
fire our whole selves with enthusiastic, grateful love, 
which will burn up our sloth, and sweep our evil out 
of our hearts, and make us swift and glad to do all 
that may please Him. If there must be fresh reinforce- 
ments thrown into the town of Mansoul, as there must 
be if it is not to be captured, there is one sure way 
of securing these. Our second text tells us whence 
the relieving force must come. If we are to keep our 
hearts with all diligence, we must be ‘kept by the 
power of God, and that power is not merely to make 
diversion outside the beleaguered fortress which may 
force the besiegers to retreat and give up their effort, 
but is to enter in and possess the soul which it wills 
to defend. It is when the enemy sees that new 


122 THE PROVERBS [CH. Iv. 


succours have, in some mysterious way, been intro- 
duced, that he gives up his siege. It is God in us 
that is our security. 

III. There is no keeping by God without faith. 

Peter was an expert in such matters, for he had had 
a bitter experience to teach him how soon and surely 
self-confidence became self-despair. ‘Though all should 
forsake Thee, yet will not I,’ was said but a few hours 
before he denied Jesus. His faith failed, and then the 
divine guard that was keeping his soul passed thence, 
and, left alone, he fell. 

That divine Power is exerted for our keeping on 
condition of our trusting ourselves to Him and trusting 
Him for ourselves. And that condition is no arbitrary 
one, but is prescribed by the very nature of divine 
help and of human faith. If God could keep our 
souls without our trust in Him He would. He does 
so keep them as far as is possible, but for all the 
choicer blessings of His giving, and especially for that 
of keeping us free from the domination of our lower 
selves, there must be in us faith if there is to be in 
God help. The hand that lays hold on God in Christ 
must be stretched out and must grasp His warm, 
gentle, and strong hand, if the tingling touch of it is 
to infuse strength. If the relieving force is victoriously 
to enter our hearts, we must throw open the gates 
and welcome it. Faith is but the open door for God’s 
entrance. It has no efficacy in itself any more than 
a door has, but all its blessedness depends on what 
it admits into the hidden chambers of the heart. 

I reiterate what I have tried to show in these poor 
words. There is no noble life without our guarding 
our hearts; there is no effectual guarding unless God 
guards; there is no divine guarding unless through 








v. 23] THE CORDS OF SIN 123 


our faith. It is vain to preach self-governing and self- 
keeping. Unless we can tell the beleaguered heart, 
‘The Lord is thy Keeper; He will keep thee from all 
evil; He will keep thy soul,’ we only add one more 
impossible command to a man’s burden. And we do 
not apprehend nor experience the divine keeping in 
its most blessed and fullest reality, unless we find it 
in Jesus, who is ‘able to keep us from falling, and 
to present us faultless before the presence of His glory 
with exceeding joy.’ 


THE CORDS OF SIN 


‘His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with 
the cords of his sins..—-PROVERBS V. 22. 
In Hosea’s tender picture of the divine training of 
Israel which, alas! failed of its effect, we read, ‘I 
drew them with cords of a man,’ which is further 
explained as being ‘ with bands of love.’ The metaphor 
in the prophet’s mind is probably that of a child being 
‘taught to go’ and upheld in its first tottering steps by 
leading-strings. God drew Israel, though Israel did 
not yield tothe drawing. Butif these gentle, attractive 
influences, which ever are raying out from Him, are 
resisted, another set of cords, not now sustaining and 
attracting, but hampering and fettering, twine them- 
selves round the rebellious life, and the man is like a 
wild creature snared in the hunter’s toils, enmeshed in 
a net, and with its once free limbs restrained. The 
choice is open to us all, whether we will let God draw 
us to Himself with the sweet manlike cords of His 
educative and forbearing love, or, flinging off these, 
which only foolish self-will construes into limitations, 





124 THE PROVERBS (oH. v. 


shall condemn ourselves to be prisoned within the 
narrow room of our own sins. We may choose which 
condition shall be ours, but one or other of them must 
be ours. We may either be drawn by the silken cord of 
God's love or we may be ‘ holden by the cords’ of our sins. 

In both clauses of our text evil deeds done are 
regarded as having a strange, solemn life apart from 
the doer of them, by which they become influential 
factors in his subsequent life. Their issues on others 
may be important, but their issues on him are the most 
important of all. The recoil of the gun on the shoulder 
of him who fired it is certain, whether the cartridge 
that flew from its muzzle wounded anything or not. 
‘His own iniquities shall take the wicked ’—they ring 
him round, a grim company to whom he has given an 
independent being, and who have now ‘taken’ him 
prisoner and laid violent hands on him. A long since 
forgotten novel told of the fate of ‘a modern Prome- 
theus, who made and put life into a dreadful creature 
in man’s shape, that became the curse of its creator's 
life. That tragedy is repeated over and over again. 
We have not done with our evil deeds when we have 
done them, but they, in a very terrible sense, begin to 
be when they are done. We sow the seeds broadcast, 
and the seed springs up dragon’s teeth. 

The view of human experience set forth, especially 
in the second clause of this text, directs our gaze into 
dark places, into which it is not pleasant to look, and 
many of you will accuse me of preaching gloomily if I 
try to turn a reflective eye inwards upon them, but no 
one will be able to accuse me of not preaching truly. 
It is impossible to enumerate all the cords that make 
up the net in which our own evil doings hold us meshed, 
but let me point out some of these. 


v. 22] THE CORDS OF SIN 125 


I. Our evil deeds become evil habits. 

We all know that anything once done becomes easier 
to do again. That is true about both good and bad 
actions, but ‘ill weeds grow apace,’ and it is infinitely 
easier to form a bad habit thanagoodone. The young 
shoot is green and flexible at first, but it soon becomes 
woody and grows high and strikes deep. We can all 
verify the statement of our text by recalling the 
tremors of conscience, the self-disgust, the dread of 
discovery which accompanied the first commission of 
some evil deed, and the silence of undisturbed, almost 
unconscious facility, that accompanied later repetitions 
of it. Sins of sense and animal passion afford the most 
conspicuous instances of this, but it is by no means 
confined to these. We have but to look steadily at our 
own lives to be aware of the working of this solemn 
law in them, however clear we may be of the grosser 
forms of evil deeds. For us all it is true that custom 
presses on us ‘ with a weight, heavy as frost and deep 
almost as life,” and that it is as hard for the Ethiopian 
to change his skin or the leopard his spots as for those 
who ‘are accustomed to do evil’ to ‘do good.’ 

But experience teaches not only that evil deeds quickly 
consolidate into evil habits, but that as the habit grips 
us faster, the poor pleasure for the sake of which the 
acts are done diminishes. The zest which partially 
concealed the bitter taste of the once eagerly swallowed 
morsel is all but gone, but the morsel is still sought 
and swallowed. Impulses wax as motives wane, the 
victim is like an ox tempted on the road to the 
slaughter-house at first by succulent fodder held before 
it, and at last driven into it by pricking goads and 
heavy blows. Many a man is so completely wrapped 
in the net which his own evil deeds have made for him, 





126 THE PROVERBS (on. v. 


that he commits the sin once more, not because he 
finds any pleasure in it, but for no better reason than 
that he has already committed it often, and the habit 
is his master. 

There are many forms of evil which compel us to 
repeat them for other reasons than the force of habit. 
For instance, a fraudulent book-keeper has to go on 
making false entries in his employer’s books in order 
to hide his peculations. Whoever steps on to the 
steeply sloping road to which self-pleasing invites us, 
soon finds that he is on an inclined plane well greased, 
and that compulsion is on him to go on, though he 
may recoil from the descent, and be shudderingly 
aware of what the end must be. Let no man say, ‘I 
will do this doubtful thing once only, and never again.’ 
Sin is like an octopus, and if the loathly thing gets the 
tip of one slender filament round a man, it will envelop 
him altogether and drag him down to the cruel beak. 

Let us then remember how swiftly deeds become 
habits, and how the fetters, which were silken at first, 
rapidly are exchanged for iron chains, and how the 
craving increases as fast as the pleasure from gratifying 
it diminishes. Let us remember that there are many 
kinds of evil which seem to force their own repetition, 
in order to escape their consequences and to hide the 
sin. Let us remember that no man can venture to say, 
‘This once only will I do this thing.’ Let us remember 
that acts become habits with dreadful swiftness, and 
let us beware that we do not forge chains of darkness 
for ourselves out of our own godless deeds. 

II. Our evil deeds imprison us for good. 

The tragedy of ‘human life is that we weave for 
ourselves manacles that fetter us from following and 
securing the one good for which we are made. Our 





v. 22] THE CORDS OF SIN 127 


evil past holds us in a firm grip. The cords which 
confine our limbs are of our own spinning. What but 
ourselves is the reason why so many of us do not yield 
to God’s merciful drawings of us to Himself? We 
have riveted the chains and twined the net that holds 
us captive, by our own acts. It is we ourselves who 
have paralysed our wills, so that we see the light of 
God but as a faint gleam far away, and dare not move 
to follow the gleam. It is we who have smothered or 
silenced our conscience and perverted our tastes, and 
done violence to all in us that ‘thirsteth for God, even 
the living God.’ Alas! how many of us have let some 
strong evil habit gain such a grip of us that it has 
overborne our higher impulses, and silenced the voice 
within us that cries out for the living God! We are 
kept back from Him by our worse selves, and whoever 
lets that which is lowest in him keep him from follow- 
ing after God, who is his ‘being’s end and aim,’ is 
caught and prisoned by the cords woven and knitted 
out of his sins. Are there none of us who know, when 
they are honest with themselves, that they would have 
been true Christians long since, had it not been for one 
darling evil that they cannot make up their minds to 
east off? Wills disabled from strongly willing the 
good, consciences silenced as when the tongue is taken 
out of a bell-buoy on a shoal, tastes perverted and set 
seeking amid the transitory treasures of earth for 
what God only can give them, these are the ‘cords’ out 
of which are knotted the nets that hold so many of us 
captive, and hinder our feet from following after God, 
even the living God, in following and possessing whom 
is the only liberty of soul, the one real joy of life. 

ITI. Our evil deeds work their own punishment. 

I do not venture to speak of the issues beyond the 





128 THE PROVERBS (cH. Vv. 


grave. It is not for a man to press these on his 
brethren. But even from the standpoint of this Book 
of Proverbs, it is certain that ‘the righteous shall be 
recompensed in the earth, much more the wicked and 
the sinner. Probably it was the earthly consequences 
of wrongdoing that were in the mind of the proverb- 
maker. And we are not to let our Christian enlighten- 
ment as to the future rob us of the certainty, written 
large on human life here and now, that with whatever 
apparent exceptions in regard to prosperous sin and 
tried righteousness, it is yet true that ‘every trans- 
gression and disobedience receives its just recompense 
of reward. Life is full of consequences of evil-doing. 
Even here and now we reap as we have sown. Every 
sin is a mistake, even if we confine our view to the 
consequences sought for in this life by it, and the 
consequences actually encountered. ‘A rogue is a 
roundabout fool. True, we believe that there is a 
future reaping so complete that it makes the partial — 
harvests gathered here seem of small account. But 
the framer of this proverb, who had little knowledge 
of that future, had seen enough in the meditative 
survey of this present to make him sure that the 
consequences of evil-doing were certain, and in a very 
true sense, penal. And leaving out of sight all that 
lies in the dark beyond, surely if we sum up the lamed 
aspirations, the perverted tastes, the ossifying of noble 
emotions, the destruction of the balance of the nature, 
the blinding of the eye of the soul, the lowering and 
narrowing of the whole nature, and many another 
wound to the best in man that come as the sure issue 
of evil deeds, we do not need to doubt that every sinful 
man is miserably ‘holden with the cords of his sin.’ 
Life is the time for sowing, but it is a time for reaping 


v, 22] THE CORDS OF SIN 129 


too, and we do not need to wait for death to experience 
the truth of the solemn warning that ‘he who soweth 
to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.’ Let us, 
then, do no deeds without asking ourselves, What will 
the harvest be? and if from any deeds that we have 
done we have to reap sorrow or inward darkness, let 
us be thankful that by experience our Father is teach- 
ing us how bitter as well as evil a thing it is to forsake 
Him, and cast off His fear from our wayward spirits. 

IV. The cords can be loosened. 

Bitter experience teaches that the imprisoning net 
clings too tightly to be stripped from our limbs by our 
own efforts. Nay rather, the net and the captive are 
one, and he who tries to cast off the oppression which 
hinders him from following that which is good is 
trying to cast off himself. The desperate problem that 
fronts every effort at self-emendation has two bristling 
impossibilities in it: one, how to annihilate the past; 
one, how to extirpate the evil that is part of my very 
self, and yet to keep the self entire. The very terms 
of the problem show it to be insoluble, and the climax 
of all honest efforts at making a clean thing of an 
unclean by means within reach of the unclean thing 
itself, is the despairing cry, ‘O wretched man that I 
am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this 
death ?’ 

But to men writhing in the grip of a sinful past, or 
paralysed beyond writhing, and indifferent, because 
hopeless, or because they have come to like their 
captivity, comes one whose name is ‘the Breaker,’ 
whose mission it is to proclaim liberty to the captives, 
and whose hand laid on the cords that bind a soul, 
causes them to drop harmless from the limbs and sets 
the bondsman free. Many tongues praise Jesus for 

I 





130 THE PROVERBS [CH. VIII. 


many great gifts, but His proper work, and that 
peculiar to Himself alone, is His work on the sin and 
the sins of the world. He deals with that which no 
man can deal with for himself or by his own power. 
He can cancel our past, so that it shall not govern our 
future. He can give new power to fight the old habits. 
He can give a new life which owes nothing to the 
former self, and is free from taint from it. He can 
break the entail of sin, the ‘law of the spirit of life in 
Christ Jesus’ can make any of us, even him who is 
most tied and bound by the chain of his sins, ‘free 
from the law of sin and death. We cannot break the 
chains that fetter us, and our own struggles, like the 
plungings of a wild beast caught in the toils, but draw 
the bonds tighter. But the chains that cannot be 
broken can be melted, and it may befall each of us as it 
befell the three Hebrews in the furnace, when the king 
‘was astonished’ and asked, ‘ Did not we cast three men 
bound into the midst of the fire?’ and wonderingly 
declared, ‘ Lo, I see four men loose walking in the midst 
of the fire, and the aspect of the fourth is like a son of 
the gods.’ 


WISDOM’S GIFT 


“That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance.’—PROVERBS Vili. 21. 


THE word here rendered ‘substance’ is peculiar. In- 
deed, it is used in a unique construction in this pass- 
age. It means ‘being’ or ‘existence,’ and seems to 
have been laid hold of by the Hebrew thinkers, from 
whom the books commonly called ‘the Wisdom Books’ 
come, as one of their almost technical expressions. 
‘Substance’ may be used in our translation in its philo- 


v. 21] WISDOM'SS GIFT 131 


sophical meaning as the supposed reality underlying 
appearances, but if we observe that in the parallel 
following clause we find ‘treasures, it seems more 
likely that in the text, it is to be taken in its secondary, 
and much debased meaning of wealth, material posses- 
sions. But the prize held out here to the lovers of 
heavenly wisdom is much more than worldly good. In 
deepest truth, the being which is theirs is God Himself. 
They who love and seek the wisdom of this book 
possess Him, and in possessing Him become possessed 
of their own true being. They are owners and lords 
of themselves, and have in their hearts a fountain of 
life, because they have God dwelling with and in them. 

I. The quest which always finds. 

‘Those who love wisdom’ might be a Hebrew trans- 
lation of ‘ philosopher, and possibly the Jewish teachers 
of wisdom were influenced by Greece, but their con- 
ception of wisdom has a deeper source than the Greek 
had, and what they meant by loving it was a widely 
different attitude of mind and heart from that of the 
Greek philosopher. It could never be said of the 
disciples of a Plato that their quest was sure to end 
in finding what they sought. Many a man then, and 
many a man since, and many a man to-day, has 
‘followed knowledge, like a sinking star, and has only 
caught a glimmer of a far-off and dubious light. There 
is only one search which is certain always to find what 
it seeks, and that is the search which knows where the 
object of it is, and seeks not as for something the 
locality of which is unknown, but as for that which 
the place of which is certain. The manifold voices of 
human aims cry, ‘Who will show us any good?’ The 
seeker who is sure to find is he who prays, ‘ Lord, lift 
Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us.’ The 





132 THE PROVERBS (cH. VIM. 


heart that truly and supremely affects God is never 
condemned to seek in vain. The Wisdom of this book 
herself is presented as proclaiming, ‘They that seek 
me earnestly shall find me,’ and humble souls in every 
age since then have set to their seal that the word is 
true to their experience. For there are two seekers in 
every such case, God and man. ‘The Father seeketh 
such to worship Him,’ and His love goes through the 
world, yearning and searching for hearts that will turn 
to Him. The shepherd seeks for the lost sheep, and 
lays it on his shoulders to bear it back to the fold. 
Jesus Christ is the incarnation of the seeking love of 
God. And the human seeker finds God, or rather is 
found by God, for no aspiration after Him is vain, no 
longing unresponded to, no effort to find Him unre- 
sponded to. We have as much of God as we wish, as 
much as our desires have fitted us to receive. The all- 
penetrating atmosphere enters every chink open to it, 
and no seeking soul has ever had to say, ‘I sought Him 
but found Him not.’ 

Is there any other quest of which the same can be 
said? Are not all paths of human effort strewed with 
the skeletons of men who have fretted and toiled away 
their lives in vain attempts to grasp aims that have 
eluded their grip? Do we not all know the sickness of 
disappointed effort, or the sadder sickness of successful 
effort, which has secured the apparent good and found — 
it not so good after all? The Christian life is, amid all 
the failures of human effort, the only life in which the 
seeking after good is but a little less blessed than the 
finding of it is, and in which it is always true that ‘he 
that seeketh findeth.’ Nor does such finding deaden 
the spirit of seeking, for in every finding there is a 
fresh discovery of new depths in God, and a consequent 


v. 21] WISDOWM’S GIFT 133 


quickening of desire to press further into the abyss of 
His Being, so that aspiration and fruition ever beget 
each other, and the upward, Godward progress of the 
soul is eternal. 

II. The finding that is always blessed. 

We have seen that being is the gift promised to the 
lovers of wisdom, and that the promise may either be 
referred to the possession of God, who is the fountain 
of all being, or to the true possession of ourselves, 
which is a consequence of our possession of Him. In 
either aspect, that possession is blessedness. + If we ; 
have God, we have real life. We truly own ourselves 
when we have God. We really live when God lives in 
us, the life of our lives. We are ourselves, when we 
have ceased to be ourselves, and have taken God to be. 
the Self of ourselves. . 

Such a life, God-possessing, brings the one good 
which corresponds to our whole nature. All other 
good is fragmentary, and being fragmentary is inade- 
quate, as men’s restless search after various forms of 
good but too sadly proves. Why does the merchant- 
man wander over sea and land seeking for many goodly 
pearls? Because he has not found one of great price, 
but tries to make up by their number for the insuffici- - 
ency of each. But the soul is made, not to find its 
wealth in the manifold but in the one, and no aggrega- 
tion of incompletenesses will make up completeness, 
nor any number of partial satisfactions of this and the 
other appetite or desire make a man feel that he has 
enough and more than enough. We must have all good 
in one Person, if we are ever to know the rest of full 
satisfaction. It will be fatal to our blessedness if we 
have to resort to a hundred different sources for 
different supplies. The true blessedness is simple and 





134 THE PROVERBS (cH. VIIL. 


yet infinitely complex, for it comes from possessing the 
one Person in whom dwell for us all forms of good, 
whether good be understood as intellectual or moral 
or emotional. That which cannot be everything to 
the soul that seeks is scarcely worth the seeking, and 
certainly is not wisely proposed as the object of a life's 
search, for such a life will be a failure if it fails to find 
its object, and scarcely less tragically, though perhaps 
less conspicuously, a failure if it finds it. All other 
good is but apparent; God is the one real object that 
meets all man’s desires and needs, and makes him 
blessed with real blessedness, and fills the cup of life 
with the draught that slakes thirst and satisfies the 
thirstiest. 

III. The blessedness that always lasts. 

He who finds God, as every one of us may find Him, 
in Christ, has found a Good that cannot change, pass, 
or grow stale. His blessedness will always last, as long 
as he keeps fast hold of that which he has, and lets no 
man take his crown. 

For the Christian’s good is the only one that does not 
intend to grow old and pall. We can never exhaust 
God. We need never grow weary of Him. Possession 
robs other wealth of its glamour, and other pleasures 
of their poignant sweetness. We grow weary of most 
good things, and those which we have long had, we 
generally find get somewhat faded and stale. Habit 
is afatal enemy to enjoyment. But it only adds to the 
joy which springs from the possession of God in Christ. 
Swedenborg said that the oldestangels look the youngest, 
and they who have longest experience of the joy of 
fellowship with God are they who enjoy each instance 
of it most. We can never drink the chalice of His love 
to the dregs, and it will be fresh and sparkling as long 


v. 21] WISDOM’S GIFT 185 


as we have lips that can absorbit. He keeps the good 
wine till the last. 

The Christian’s good is the only good which cannot 
be taken away. Loss and change beggars the million- 
aire sometimes, and the possibility of loss shadows all 
earthly good with pale foreboding. Everything that 
is outside the substance of the soul can be withdrawn, 
but the possession of God in Christ is so intimate and 
inward, so interwoven with the very deepest roots of 
the Christian’s personal being, that it cannot be taken 
out from these by any shocks of time or change. There 
is but one hand that can end that possession and that 
is his own. He can withdraw himself from God, by 
giving himself over to sin and the world. He can 
empty the shrine and compel the indwelling deity to 
say, as the legend told was heard in the Temple the 
night before Roman soldiers desecrated the Holy of 
Holies: Let us depart. But besides himself, ‘neither 
things present, nor things to come, nor height nor 
depth, nor any other creature’ has power to take away 
that faithful God to whom a poor soul clings, and in 
whom whoso thus clings finds its unchangeable good. 

The Christian’s good is the only one from which we 
cannot be taken. A grim psalm paints for us the life 
and end of men ‘who trust in the multitude of their 
possessions,’ and whose ‘inward thought is that they 
have founded families that will last.’ It tells how ‘this 
their way is folly, and yet is approved with acclama- 
tions by the crowd. It lets us see the founder of a 
family, the possessor of broad acres, going down to the 
grave, carrying nothing away, stripped of his glory and 
with Death for his shepherd, who has driven his flock 
from pleasant pastures here into the dreariness of 
Sheol. But that shepherd has a double office. Some 





136 THE PROVERBS (on. vin. 


he separates from all their possessions, hopes, and joys. 
Some he, stern though his aspect and harsh though his 
guidance, leads up to the green pastures of God, and as 
the last messenger of the love of God in Christ, unites 
the souls that found God amid the distractions of earth 
with the God whom they will know better and possess 
more fully and blessedly, amid the unending felicities 
and progressive blessednesses of Heaven. 


WISDOM AND CHRIST 


‘Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, 
rejoicing always before him; 31. Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; 
and my delights were with the sons of men.’—PROVERBS viii. 30, 31. 


THERE is a singular difference between the two por- 
tions of this Book of Proverbs. The bulk of it, beginning 
with chapter x., contains a collection of isolated maxims 
which may be described as the product of sanctified 
common sense. They are shrewd and homely, but not 
remarkably spiritual or elevated. To these is prefixed 
this introductory portion, continuous, lofty in style, 
and in its personification of divine wisdom, rising to 
great sublimity both of thought and of expression. It 
seems as if the main body of the book had been fitted 
with an introduction by another hand than that of the 
compilers of the various sets of proverbial sayings. It 
is apparently due to an intellectual movement, perhaps 
not uninfluenced by Greek thought, and chronologically 
the latest of the elements composing the Old Testament 
scriptures. In place of the lyric fervour of prophets, 
and the devout intuition of psalmists, we have the 
praise of Wisdom. But that noble portrait is no copy 
of the Greek conception, but contains features peculiar 
to itself. She stands opposed to blatant, meretricious 


vs. 30,31] WISDOM AND CHRIST 137 


Folly, and seeks to draw men to herself by lofty 
motives and offering pure delights. Sheis nota person. 
but she is a personification of an aspect of the divine 
nature, and seeing that she is held forth as willing to 
bestow herself on men, that queenly figure shadows 
the great truth of God’s self-communication as being 
the end and climax of all His revelation. 

We are on the wrong tack when we look for more or 
less complete resemblances between the ‘Wisdom’ of 
Proverbs and the ‘Sophia’ of Greek thinkers. It is 
much rather an anticipation, imperfect but real, of 
Jesus than a pale reflection of Greek thought. The 
way for the perfect revelation of God in the incarnation 
was prepared by prophet and psalmist. Was it not also 
prepared by this vision of a Wisdom which was always 
with God, and yet had its delights with the sons of men, 
and whilst ‘rejoicing always before Him,’ yet rejoiced 
in the habitable parts of the earth ? 

Let us then look, however imperfect our gaze may 
be, at the self-revelation in Proverbs of the personified 
divine Wisdom, and compare it with the revelation of 
the incarnate divine Word. 

I. The Self-revelation of Wisdom. 

The words translated in Authorised Version, ‘As one 
brought up with him,’ are rendered in Revised Version, 
‘as a master workman, and seem intended to represent 
Wisdom—that is, of course, the divine Wisdom—as 
having been God’s agent in the creative act. In the 
preceding context, she triumphantly proclaims her 
existence before His ‘works of old,’ and that she was 
with God, ‘or ever the earth was. Before the ever- 
lasting mountains she was, before fountains flashed in 
the light and refreshed the earth, her waters flowed. 
But that presence is not all, Wisdom was the divine 





138 THE PROVERBS (oH. Vin. 


agent in creation. That thought goes beyond the 
ancient one: ‘He spake and it was done.’ Genesis 
regards the divine command as the cause of creatural 
being. God said, ‘Let there be—and there was’: the 
forthputting of His will was the impulse to which 
creatures sprang into existence at response. That is a 
great thought, but the meditative thinker in our text 
has pondered over the facts of creation, and notwith- 
standing all their apparent incompletenesses and 
errors, has risen to the conclusion that they can all be 
vindicated as ‘very good. To him, this wonderful 
universe is not only the product of a sovereign will, 
but of one guided in its operations by all- seeing 
Wisdom. 

Then the relation of this divine Wisdom to God is 
represented as being a continual delight and a child- 
like rejoicing in Him, or as the word literally means, a 
‘sporting’in Him. Whatever energy of creative action. 
is suggested by the preceding figure of a ‘ master 
workman, that energy had no effort. To the divine 
Wisdom creation was an easy task. She was not so 
occupied with it as to interrupt her delight in con- 
templating God, and her task gave her infinite satisfac- 
tion, for she ‘rejoiced always’ before Him, and she 
rejoiced in His habitable earth. The writer does not 
shrink from ascribing to the agent of creation some- 
thing like the glow of satisfaction that we feel over a 
piece of well-done work, the poet’s or the painter's 
rapture as he sees his thoughts bodied forth in melody 
or glowing on canvas. 

But there is a greater thought than these here, for 
the writer adds, ‘and my delight was with the sons of 
men.’ It isnoteworthy that the same word is used in the 
preceding verse. The ‘delight of the heavenly Wisdom 


le 


vs. 30,31] WISDOM AND CHRIST 139’ 


in God’ is not unlike that directed to man. ‘The sons 
of men’ are the last, noblest work of Creation, and on 
them, as the shining apex, her delight settles. The 
words describe not only what was true when man 
came into being, as the utmost possible climax of 
creatural excellence, but are the revelation of what still 
remains true. 

One cannot but feel how in all this most striking 
disclosure of the depths of God,a deeper mystery is on 
the verge of revelation. There is here, as we have 
said, a personification, but there seems to be a Person 
shining through, or dimly discerned moving behind, 
the curtain. Wisdom is the agent of creation. She 
creates with ease, and in creating delights in God as 
well as in her work, which calls for no effort in doing, 
and done, is all very good. She delights most of all in 
the sons of men, and that delight is permanent. Does 
not this unknown Jewish thinker, too, belong, as well 
as prophet and psalmist, to those who went before 
crying, Hosanna to Him that cometh in the name of 
the Lord? Let us turn to the New Testament and find 
an answer to the question. 

II. The higher revelation of the divine Word. 

There can be no doubt that the New\Testament is 
committed to the teaching that the Eternal Word of 
God, who was incarnate in Jesus, was the agent of 
creation. John, in his profound prologue to the Gospel, 
utters the deepest truths in brief sentences of mono- 
syllables, and utters them without a trace of feeling 
that they needed proof. To him they are axiomatic 
and self evident. ‘All things were made by Him.’ The 
words are the words of a child; the thought takes a 
flight beyond the furthest reach of the mind of men. 
Paul, too, adds his Amen when he proclaims that ‘< All 





140 THE PROVERBS [CH. VII. 


things have been created through Him and unto Him, 
and He is before all things, and in Him all things hold 
together.’ The writer of Hebrews declares a Son 
‘through whom also He made the worlds, and who 
upholds all things by the word of His power, and does 
not scruple at transferring to Jesus the grand poetry 
of the Psalmist who hymned ‘Thou, Lord, in the 
beginning, hast laid the foundation of the earth, and 
the heavens are the work of Thy hands. We speak 
of things too deep for us when we speak of persons in 
the Godhead, but yet we know that the Eternal Word, 
which was from the beginning, was made flesh and 
dwelt among us. The personified Wisdom of Proverbs 
is the personal Word of John’s prologue. John almost 
quotes the former when he says ‘the same was in the 
beginning with God,’ for his word recalls the grand 
declaration, ‘The Lord possessed me in the beginning 
of His way .. . I was set up in the beginning or ever 
the earth was.’ Then there are two beginnings, one 
lost in the depths of timeless being, one, the commence- 
ment of creative activity, and that Word was with 
God in the remotest, as in the nearer, beginning. 

But the ancient vision of the Jewish thinker antici- 
pated the perfect revelation of the New Testament 
still further, in its thought of an unbroken communion 
between the personified Wisdom and God. That dim 
thought of perfect communion and interchange of 
delights flashes into wondrous clearness when we think 
of Him who spake of ‘the glory which I had with Thee 
before the foundation of the world, and calmly 
declared: ‘Thou lovedst me before the foundation of 
the world.’ Into that depth of mutual love we cannot 
look, and our eyes are too dim-sighted to bear the 
blaze of that flashing interchange of glory, but we shall 


vs. 30,31] WISDOM AND CHRIST 141 


rob the earthly life of Jesus of its pathos and saving 
power, if we do not recognise that in Him the personi- 
fication of Proverbs has become a person, and that 
when He became flesh, He not only took on Him the 
garment of mortality, but laid aside ‘ the visible robes 
of His imperial majesty, and that His being found in 
fashion as a man was humbling Himself beyond all 
humiliation that afterwards was His. 

But still further, the Gospel reality fills out and com- 
pletes the personification of Proverbs in that it shows 
us a divine person who so turned to ‘the sons of men’ 
that He took on Him their nature and Himself bore 
their sicknesses. The Jewish writer had great thoughts 
of the divine condescension, and was sure that God’s 
love still rested on men, sinful as they were, but not 
even he could foresee the miracle of long-suffering love 
in the Incarnate Jesus, and he had no power of insight 
into the depths of the heart of God, that enabled him 
to foresee the sufferings and death of Jesus. Till that 
supreme self-sacrifice was a fact, it was inconceivable. 
Alas, now that it is a fact, to how many hearts that 
need it most is it still incredible. But passing all 
anticipation as it is, it is the root of all joy, the ground 
of all hope, and to millions of sinful souls it is their only 
refuge, and their sovereign example and pattern of life. 

The Jewish thinker had a glimpse of a divine wisdom 
which delighted in man, but he did not dream of the 
divine stooping to share in man’s sorrows, or of its so 
loving humanity as to take on itself its limitations, not 
only to pity these as God’s images, but to take part of 
the same and to die. That man should minister to the 
divine delight is wonderful, but that God should par- 
ticipate in man’s grief passes wonder. Thereby a new 
tenderness is given to the ancient personification, and 





142 THE PROVERBS [OH. VIII. 


the august form of the divine Wisdom softens and 
melts into the yet more august and tender likeness of 
the divine Love. Nor is there only an adumbration of 
the redeeming love of Jesus as He dwells among us. 
here, but we have to remember that Jesus delights in 
the sons of men when they love Him back again. All 
the sweet mysteries of our loving communion with 
Him, and of His joy in our faith, love, and obedience, 
all the secret treasures of His self-impartation to, and 
abiding in, souls that open themselves to His entrance, 
are suggested in that thought. We can minister to the 
joy of Jesus, and when He is welcomed into any heart, 
and any man’s love answers His, He sees of the travail 
of His soul and is satisfied. 

III. The call of the personal Word to each of us. 

The Wisdom of Proverbs is portrayed in her queenly 
dignity, as calling men to herself, and promising them 
the satisfaction of all their needs. She describes her- 
self that the description may draw men to her. The 
self-revelation of God is His mightiest means of 
attracting men to Him. We but need to know Him as 
He really is, in order to love Him and cling to Him. A 
fairer form than hers has drawn near to us, and ¢alls 
us with tenderer invitations and better promises. The 
divine Wisdom has become Man with ‘sweet human 
hands and lips and eyes.’ Such was His delight in the 
sons of men that He emptied Himself of His glory, and 
finished a greater work than that over which he pre- 
sided when the mountains were settled and the hills 
brought forth. Now He calls us, and His summons is 
tenderer, and gives promise of loftier blessings than 
the call of Wisdom was and did. She called to the © 
simple, ‘Come eat ye of my bread, and drink of the wine 
which I have mingled.’ He invites us: ‘If any man 


vs. 30,31] THE DIVINE WORKING 143 


thirst, let him come unto Me and drink,’ and He fur- 
nishes a table for us, and calls us to eat of the bread 
which is His body broken for us, and to drink of the 
wine which is His blood shed for many for the remission 
of sins. She promises ‘riches and honour, yea, durable 
riches and righteousness. His voice vibrates with 
sympathy, and calls the weary and heavy laden, of 
whom she scarcely thinks, and offers to them a gift, 
which may seem humble enough beside her more 
dazzling offers of fruit, better than gold and revenues, 
better than choice silver, but which come closer to 
universal wants, the gift of rest, which is really what 
all men long for, and none but they who take His yoke 
upon them possess. ‘See that ye refuse not Him that 
speaketh,’ for if they escaped not when they refused 
her that spake through the Jewish thinker’s lips of old, 
‘much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from 
Him that beseecheth us from heaven. Jesus is the 
power of God and the wisdom of God, and it is in Him 
crucified that our weakness and our folly are made 
strong and wise, and Wisdom’s ancient promise is 
fulfilled: ‘ Whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall 
obtain favour of the Lord.’ 


THE TWO-FOLD ASPECT OF THE DIVINE 
WORKING J 


‘The way of the Lord is strength to the upright: but destruction shalA be to the 
workers of iniquity. PROVERBS x. 29. 
You observe that the words ‘shall be,’ in , the last 
clause, are asupplement. They are quite unnecessary, 
and in fact they rather hinder the sense. They destroy 
the completeness of the antithesis between the two 





144 THE PROVERBS (cH. x. 


halves of the verse. If you leave them out, and suppose 
that the ‘ way of the Lord’ is what is spoken of in both 
clauses, you get a far deeper and fuller meaning. 
‘The way of the Lord is strength to the upright; but 
destruction to the workers of iniquity.’ It is the same 
way which is strength to one man and ruin to another, 
and the moral nature of the man determines which it 
shall be to him. That is a penetrating word, which 
goes deep down. The unknown thinkers, to whose 
keen insight into the facts of human life we are in- 
debted for this Book of Proverbs, had pondered for 
many an hour over the perplexed and complicated 
fates of men, and they crystallised their reflections at 
last in this thought. They have in it struck upon a 
principle which explains a great many things, and 
teaches us a great many solemn lessons. Let us try 
to get a hold of what is meant, and then to look at 
some applications and illustrations of the principle. 

I. First, then, let me just try to put clearly the 
meaning and bearing of these words. ‘The way of 
the Lord’ means, sometimes in the Old Testament and 
sometimes in the New, religion, considered as the way 
in which God desires a man to walk. So we read in 
the New Testament of ‘the way’ as the designation 
of the profession and practice of Christianity; and 
‘the way of the Lord’ is often used in the Psalms for 
the-path which He traces for man by His sovereign 
will. . 

But that, of course, is not the meaning here. Here 
it means, not the road in which God prescribes that 
we should walk, but that road in which He Himself 
walks; or, in other words, the sum of the divine 
action, the solemn footsteps of God through creation, 
providence, and history. ‘His goings forth are from 


<a 
r 


v. 29] THE DIVINE WORKING 145 


everlasting. ‘His way is in the sea. ‘His way isin 
the sanctuary. Modern language has a whole set of 
phrases which mean the same thing as the Jew meant 
by ‘the way of the Lord, only that God is left out. 
They talk about the ‘current of events,’ ‘the general 
tendency of things, ‘the laws of human affairs,’ and 
so on. I, for my part, prefer the old-fashioned 
‘Hebraism. To many modern thinkers the whole 
drift and tendency of human affairs affords no sign 
of a person directing these. They hear the clashing 
and grinding of opposing forces, the thunder as of 
falling avalanches, and the moaning as of a homeless 
wind, but they hear the sounds of no footfalls echoing 
down the ages. This ancient teacher had keener 
ears. Well for us if we share his faith, and see in all 
the else distracting mysteries of life and history, ‘the 
way of the Lord!’ 

But not only does the expression point to the opera- 
tion of a personal divine Will in human affairs, but 
it conceives of that operation as one, a uniform and 
consistent whole. However complicated, and some- 
times apparently contradictory, the individual events 
were, there was a unity in them, and they all converged 
on one result. The writer does not speak of ‘ ways,’ 
but of ‘the way, as a grand unity. It is all one con- 
tinuous, connected, consistent mode of operation from 
beginning to end. 

The author of this proverb believed something more 
about the way of the Lord. He believed that although 
itis higher than our way, still, a man can know some- 
thing about it; and that whatever may be enigmatical, 
and sometimes almost heart-breaking, in it, one thing 
is sure—that as we have been taught of late years in 
another dialect, it ‘makes for righteousness.’ ‘ Clouds 

K 





146 THE PROVERBS [on. x. 


and darkness are round about Him,’ but the Old Testa- 
ment writers never falter in the conviction, which was 
the soul of all their heroism and the life blood of their 
religion, that in the hearts of the clouds and darkness, 
‘Justice and judgment are the foundations of His 
throne.’ The way of the Lord, says this old thinker, 
is hard to understand, very complicated, full of all 
manner of perplexities and difficulties, and yet on the 
whole the clear drift and tendency of the whole thing 
is discernible, and it is this: it is all on the side of good. 
Everything that is good, and everything that does 
good, is an ally of God’s, and may be sure of the divine 
favour and of the divine blessing resting upon it. 

And just because that is so clear, the other side is 
as true; the same way, the same set of facts, the same 
continuous stream of tendency, which is all with and 
for every form of good, is all against every form of 
evil. Or, as one of the Psalmists puts the same idea, 
‘The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His 
ears are open unto their cry. The face of the Lord is 
against them that do evil.’ The same eye that beams 
in lambent love on ‘the righteous’ burns terribly to 
the evil doer. ‘The face of the Lord’ means the side 
of the divine nature which is turned to us, and is 
manifested by His self-revealing activity, so that the 
expression comes near in meaning to ‘the way of the 
Lord; and the thought in both cases is the same, that 
by the eternal law of His being, God’s actions must all 
be for the good and against the evil. 

They do not change, but a man’s character determines 
which aspect of them he sees and has to experience. 
God’s way has a bright side and a dark. You may 
take which you like. You can lay hold of the thing 
by whichever handle you choose. On the one side it 


v. 29] THE DIVINE WORKING 147 


is convex, on the other concave. You can approach 
it from either side, as you please. ‘The way of the 
Lord’ must touch your ‘way.’ Your cannot alter that 
necessity. Your path must either run parallel in the 
same direction with His, and then all His power will 
be an impulse to bear you onward; or it must run in 
the opposite direction, and then all His power will be 
for your ruin, and the collision with it will crush you 
as a ship is crushed like an egg-shell, when it strikes 
an iceberg. You can choose which of these shall befall 
you. 

And there is a still more striking beauty about the 
saying, if we give the full literal meaning to the word 
‘strength.’ It is used by our translators, I suppose, in 
a somewhat archaic and peculiar signification, namely, 
that of a stronghold. At all events the Hebrew means 
a fortress, a place where men may live safe and secure; 
and if we take that meaning, the passage gains greatly 
in force and beauty. This ‘way of the Lord’ is like a 
castle for the shelter of the shelterless good man, and 
behind those strong bulwarks he dwells impregnable 
and safe. Just as a fortress is a security to the 
garrison, and a frowning menace to the besiegers or 
enemies, so the ‘name of the Lord is a strong tower,’ 
and the ‘ way of the Lord’ isa fortress. If you choose 
to take shelter within it, its massive walls are your 
security and your joy. If you do not, they frown 
down grimly upon you, a menace and a terror. How 
differently, eight hundred years ago, Normans and 
Saxons looked at the square towers that were built 
all over England to bridle the inhabitants! To the 
one they were the sign of the security of their 
dominion; to the other they were the sign of their 
slavery and submission. Torture and prison-houses 





148 THE PROVERBS [cH. x. 


they might become; frowning portents they necessarily 
were. ‘The way of the Lord’ is a castle fortress to the 
man that does good, and to the man that does evil it 
is a threatening prison, which may become a hell of 
torture. It is ‘ruin to the workers of iniquity. I 
pray you, settle for yourself which of these it is to 
be to you. 

II. And now let me say a word or two by way of 
application, or illustration, of these principles that are 
here. 

First, let me remind you how the order of the uni- 
verse is such that righteousness is life and sin is death. 
This universe and the fortunes of men are complicated 
and strange. It is hard to trace any laws, except purely 
physical ones, at work. Still, on the whole, things do 
work so that goodness is blessedness, and badness is 
ruin. That is, of course, not always true in regard of 
outward things, but even about them it is more often 
and obviously true than we sometimes recognise. 
Hence all nations have their proverbs, embodying the 
generalised experience of centuries, and asserting that, 
on the whole, ‘honesty is the best policy, and that it 
is always a blunder to do wrong. What modern 
phraseology calls ‘laws of nature,’ the Bible calls ‘the 
way of the Lord’; and the manner in which these help 
aman who conforms to them, and hurt or kill him if 
he does not, is an illustration on a lower level of the 
principle of our text. This tremendous congeries of 
powers in the midst of which we live does not care 
whether we go with it or against it, only if we do the 
one we shall prosper, and if we do the other we shall 
very likely be made an end of. Try to stop a train, 
and it will run over you and murder you; get into it, 
and it will carry you smoothly along. Our lives are 


v. 29] THE DIVINE WORKING 149 


surrounded with powers, which will carry our messages 
and be our slaves if we know how to command nature 
by obeying it, or will impassively strike us dead if we 
do not. : 

Again, in our physical life, as a rule, virtue makes 
strength, sin brings punishment. ‘Riotous living’ 
makes diseased bodies. Sins in the flesh are avenged 
in the flesh, and there is no need for a miracle to bring 
it about that he who sows to the flesh shall ‘of the 
flesh reap corruption. God entrusts the punishment of 
the breach of the laws of temperance and morality in 
the body to the ‘natural’ operation of such breach. 
The inevitable connection between sins against the 
body and disease in the body, is an instance of the way 
of the Lord—the same set of principles and facts— 
being strength to one man and destruction to another. 
Hundreds of young men in Manchester—some of whom 
are listening to me now, no doubt—are killing them- 
selves, or at least are ruining their health, by flying in 
the face of the plain laws of purity and self-control. 
They think that they must ‘ have their fling, and ‘obey 
their instincts, and so on. Well, if they must, then 
another ‘must’ will insist upon coming into play—and 
they must reap as they have sown, and drink as they 
have brewed, and the grim saying of this book about 
profligate young men will be fulfilled in many of them. 
‘His bones are full of the iniquity of his youth, which 
shall lie down with him in the grave.’ Be not deceived, 
God is not mocked, and His way avenges bodily trans- 
gressions by bodily sufferings. 

And then, in higher regions, on the whole, goodness 
makes blessedness, and evil bringsruin. All the powers 
of God’s universe, and all the tenderness of God’s heart 
are on the side of the man that does right. The stars 





150 THE PROVERBS (om. x. 


in their courses fight against the man that fights 
against Him; and on the other side, in yielding thy- 
self to the will of God and following the dictates of 
His commandments, ‘Thou shalt make a league with 
the beasts of the field, and the stones of the field shall 
be at peace with thee.’ All things serve the soul that 
serves God, and all war against him who wars against 
his Maker. -The way of the Lord cannot but further 
and help all who love and serve Him. For them all 
things must work together for good. By the very laws 
of God’s own being, which necessarily shape all His 
actions, the whole ‘stream of tendency without us 
makes for righteousness. In the one course of life 
we go with the stream of divine activity which pours 
from the throne of God. In the other we are like 
men trying to row a boat up Niagara. All the rush of 
the mighty torrent will batter us back. Our work will 
be doomed to destruction, and ourselves toshame. For 
ever and ever to be good is to be well. An eternal 
truth lies in the facts that the same word ‘good’ means 
pleasant and right, and that sin and sorrow are both 
called ‘evil.’ All sin is self-inflicted sorrow, and every 
‘rogue is a roundabout fool.’ So ask yourselves the 
question: ‘Is my life in harmony with, or opposed to, 
these omnipotent laws which rule the whole field of 
life ?’ 

Still further, this same fact of the two-fold aspect 
and operation of the one way of the Lord will be made 
yet more evident in the future. It becomes us to speak 
very reverently and reticently about the matter, but I 
can conceive it possible that the one manifestation of 
God in a future life may be in substance the same, and 
yet that it may produce opposite effects upon oppositely 
disposed souls. According to the old mystical illustra- 


v. 29] THE DIVINE WORKING 151 


tion, the same heat that melts wax hardens clay, and 
the same apocalypse of the divine nature in another 
world may to one man be life and joy, and to another 
man may be terror and despair. Ido not dwell upon 
that; it is far too awful a thing for us to speak about 
to one another, but it is worth your taking to heart 
when you are indulging in easy anticipations that of 
course God is merciful and will bless and save every- 
body after he dies. Perhaps—I do not go any further 
than a perhaps—perhaps God cannot, and perhaps if a 
man has got himself into such a condition as it is 
possible for a man to get into, perhaps, like light upon 
a diseased eye, the purest beam may be the most ex- 
quisite pain, and the natural instinct may be to ‘call 
upon the rocks and the hills to fall upon them’ and 
cover them up in a more genial darkness from that 
Face, to see which should be life and blessedness. 

People speak of future rewards and punishments as 
if they were given and inflicted by simple and divine 
volition, and did not stand in any necessary connection 
with holiness on the one hand or with sin on the other. 
I do not deny that some portion of both bliss and 
sorrow may be of such a character. But there is a 
very important and wide region in which our actions 
here must automatically bring consequences hereafter 
of joy or sorrow, without any special retributive action 
of God’s. : 

We have only to keep in view one or two things 
about the future which we know to be true, and we 
shall see this. Suppose a man with his memory of all 
his past life perfect, and his conscience stimulated to 


greater sensitiveness and clearer judgment, and all 


opportunities ended of gratifying tastes and appetites, 
whose food is in this world, while yet the soul has 





152 THE PROVERBS [cH. x. 


become dependent on them for ease and comfort. 
What more is needed to make a hell? And the sup- 
position is but the statement of a fact. We seem to 
forget much; but when the waters are drained off all 
the lost things will be found at the bottom. Conscience 
gets dulled and sophisticated here. But the iey cold of 
death will wake it up, and the new position will give 
new insight into the true character of our actions. 
You see how often a man at the end of life has his 
eyes cleared to see his faults. But how much more 
will that be the case hereafter! When the rush of 
passion is past, and you are far enough from your life 
to view it as a whole, holding it at arm’s length, you 
will see better what it looks like. There is nothing 
improbable in supposing that inclinations and tastes 
which have been nourished for a lifetime may survive 
the possibility of indulging them in another life, as 
they often do in this; and what can be worse than 
such a thirst for one drop of water, which never can 
be tasted more? These things are certain, and no 
more is needed to make sin produce, by necessary con- 
sequence, misery, and ruin; while similarly, goodness 
brings joy, peace, and blessing. 

But again, the self-revelation of God has this same 
double aspect. 

‘The way of the Lord’ may mean His process by 
which He reveals His character. Every truth concern- 
ing Him may be either a joy or a terror tomen. All 
His ‘attributes’ are builded into ‘a strong tower, into 
which the righteous runneth, and is safe,’ or else they 
are builded into a prison and torture-house. So the 
thought of God may either be a happy and strengthen- 
ing one, or an unwelcome one. ‘I remembered God, 
and was troubled,’ says one Psalmist. What an awful 


v. 29] THE DIVINE WORKING 153 


confession — that the thought of God disturbed him! 
The thought of God to some of us is a very unwelcome 
one, as unwelcome as the thought of a detective to a 
company of thieves. Is not that dreadful? Music isa 
torture to some ears: and there are people who have 
so alienated their hearts and wills from God that the 
Name which should be ‘their dearest faith’ is not only 
their ‘ghastliest doubt, but their greatest pain. O 
brethren, the thought of God and all that wonderful 
complex of mighty attributes and beauties which make 
His Name should be our delight, the key to all treasures, 
the end of all sorrows, our light in darkness, our life 
in death, our all in all. It is either that to us, or 
it is something that we would fain forget. Which is 
it to you? 

Especially the Gospel has this double aspect. Our 
text speaks of the distinction between the righteous 
and evil doers; but how to pass from the one class to the 
other, it does not tell us. The Gospel is the answer to 
that question. It tells us that though we are all 
‘workers of iniquity, and must, therefore, if such a 
text as this were the last word to be spoken on the 
matter, share in the ruin which smites the opponent 
of the divine will, we may pass from that class; and 
by simple faith in Him who died on the Cross for all 
workers of iniquity, may become of those righteous 
on whose side God works in all His way, who have 
all His attributes drawn up like an embattled army 
in their defence, and have His mighty name for their 
refuge. 

As the very crown of the ways of God, the work of 
Christ and the record of it in the Gospel have most 
eminently this double aspect. God meant nothing but 
the salvation of the whole world when He sent us this 





154 THE PROVERBS fom. x. 


Gospel. His ‘way’ therein was pure, unmingled, uni- 
versal love. We can make that great message un- 
troubled blessing by simply accepting it. Nothing 
more is needed but to take God at His word, and to 
close with His sincere and earnest invitation. Then 
Christ’s work becomes the fortress in which we are 
guarded from sin and guilt, from the arrows of con- 
science, and the fiery darts of temptation. But if not 
accepted, then it is not passive, it is not nothing. If 
rejected, it does more harm to a man than anything 
else can, just because, if accepted, it would have done 
him more good. The brighter the light, the darker 
the shadow. The pillar which symbolised the presence 
of God sent down influences on either side; to the 
trembling crowd of the Israelites on the one hand, to 
the pursuing ranks of the Egyptians on the other; and 
though the pillar was one, opposite effects streamed 
from it, and it was ‘a cloud and darkness to them, but 
it gave light by night to these. Everything depends 
on which side of the pillar you choose to see. The ark 
of God, which brought dismay and death among false 
gods and their worshippers, brought blessing into the 
humble house of Obed Edom, the man of Gath, with 
whom it rested for three months before it was set in 
its place in the city of David. That which is meant to 
be the savour of life unto life must either be that or 
the savour of death unto death. 

Jesus Christ is something to each of us. For you who 
have heard His name ever since you were children, 
your relation to Him settles your condition and your 
prospects, and moulds your character. Either He is 
for you the tried corner-stone, the sure foundation, 
on which whosoever builds will not be confounded, or 
He is the stone of stumbling, against which whosoever 


v. 29] WISDOM AND FOLLY 155 


stumbles will be broken, and which will crush to powder 
whomsoever it falls upon. ‘This Child is set for the 
rise’ or for the fall of all who hear His name. He 
leaves no man at the level at which He found him, but 
either lifts him up nearer to God, and purity and joy, 
or sinks him into an ever-descending pit of darkening 
separation from all these. Which is He to you? 
Something He must be—your strength or your ruin. 
If you commit your souls to Him in humble faith, He 
will be your peace, your life, your Heaven. If you 
turn from His offered grace, He will be your pain, 
your death, your torture. ‘What maketh Heaven, 
that maketh hell.’ Which do you choose Him to be? 


THE MANY-SIDED CONTRAST OF WISDOM 
AND FOLLY 


*‘Whoso loveth instruction loveth knowledge: but he that hateth reproof is 
brutish. 2. A good man obtaineth favour of the Lord: but a man of wicked 
devices will he condemn. 3. A man shall not be established by wickedness; but 
the root of the righteous shall not be moved. 4. A virtuous woman is a crown to 
her husband: but she that maketh ashamedis as rottenness in his bones. 5. The 
thoughts of the righteous are right: but the counsels of the wicked are deceit. 
6. The words of the wicked are to lie in wait for blood: but the mouth of the up- 
right shall deliver them. 7. The wicked are overthrown, and are not: but the 
house of the righteous shall stand. 8. A man shall be commended according to 
his wisdom: but he that is of a perverse heart shall be despised. 9. He that is 
despised, and hath a servant, is better than he that honoureth himself, and lacketh 
bread. 10. A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender 
mercies of the wicked are cruel. 11. He that tilleth his land shall be satisfied with 
bread : but he that followeth vain persons is void of understanding. 12. The wicked 
desireth the net of evil men: but the root of the righteous yieldeth fruit. 13. The 
wicked is snared by the transgression of his lips: but the just shall come out of 
trouble. 14. A man shall be satisfied with good by the fruit of his mouth; and 
the recompence of a man’s hands shall be rendered unto him. 15. The way of a 
fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.’-— 
PROVERBS xii. 1-15. 


THE verses of the present passage are a specimen of 
the main body of the Book of Proverbs. They are not 
a building, but a heap. The stones seldom have any 
mortar between them, and connection or progress is 
for the most part sought in vain. But one great anti- 





156 THE PROVERBS (CH. XI. 


thesis runs through the whole—the contrast of wisdom 
or righteousness with folly or wickedness. The com- 
piler or author is never weary of setting out that 
opposition in all possible lights. It is, in his view, the 
one difference worth noting between men, and it de- 
termines their whole character and fortunes. The 
book traverses with keen observation all the realm of 
life, and everywhere finds confirmation of its great 
principle that goodness is wisdom and sin folly. 

There is something extremely impressive in this 
continual reiteration of that contrast. As we read, we 
feel as if, after all, there were nothing in the world but 
it and its results. That profound sense of the exist- 
ence and far-reaching scope of the division of men into 
two classes is not the least of the benefits which a 
thoughtful study of Proverbs brings to us. In this 
lesson it is useless to attempt to classify the verses. 
Slight traces of grouping appear here and there; but, 
on the whole, we have a set of miscellaneous aphorisms 
turning on the great contrast, and setting in various 
lights the characters and fates of the righteous and the 
wicked. 

The first mark of difference is the opposite feeling 
about discipline. If a man is wise, he will love ‘know- 
ledge’; and if he loves knowledge, he will love the 
means to it, and therefore will not kick against correc- 
tion. That is another view of trials from the one 
which inculcates devout submission to a Father. It 
regards only the benefits to ourselves. If we want 
to be taught anything, we shall not flinch from the 
rod. There must be pains undergone in order to 
win knowledge of any sort, and the man who rebels 
against these shows that he had rather be comfortable 
and ignorant than wise. <A pupil who will not stand 


vs. 1-15] WISDOM AND FOLLY 157 


having his exercises corrected will not learn his faults. 
On the other hand, hating reproof is ‘brutish’ in the 
most literal sense ; forit is the characteristic of animals 
that they do not understand the purpose of pain, and 
never advance because they do not. Men can grow 
because they can submit to discipline; beasts cannot 
improve because, except partially and in a few cases, 
they cannot accept correction. 

The first proverb deals with wisdom or goodness in 
its inner source; namely, a docile disposition. The two 
next deal with its consequences. It secures God’s 
favour, while its opposite is condemned; and then, as 
a consequence of this, the good man is established and 
the wicked swept away. The manifestations of God’s 
favour and its opposite are not to be thrown forward 
to a future life. Continuously the sunshine of divine 
love falls on the one man, and already the other is con- 
demned. It needs some strength of faith to look 
through the shows of prosperity often attending plain 
wickedness, and believe that it is always a blunder to | 
do wrong. | 

But a moderate experience of life will supply many 
instances of prosperous villainy in trade and politics 
which melted away like mist. The shore is strewn 
with wrecks, dashed to pieces because righteousness did 
not steer. Every exchange gives examples in plenty. 
How many seemingly solid structures built on wrong 
every man has seen in his lifetime crumble like the 
cloud masses which the wind piles in the sky and then 
dissipates! The root of the righteous is in God, and 
therefore he is firm. The contrast is like that of 
Psalm i.—between the tree with strong roots and 
Waving greenery, and the chaff, rootless, and there- 
fore whirled out of the threshing-floor. 


7 





158 THE PROVERBS (cH. "x11. 


The universal contrast is next applied to women; 
and in accordance with the subordinate position they 
held in old days, the bearing of her goodness is princi- 
pally regarded as affecting her husband. That does 
not cover the whole ground, of course. But wherever 
there is a true marriage, the wife will not think that 
woman's rights are infringed because one chief issue 
of her beauty of virtue is the honour and joy it reflects 
upon him who has her heart. ‘A virtuous woman’ is 
not only one who possesses the one virtue to which the 
phrase has been so miserably confined, but who is ‘a 
woman of strength —no doll or plaything, but 


‘A perfect woman, nobly planned 
To warn, to comfort, and command.’ 


The gnawing misery of being fastened like two dogs 
in a leash to one who ‘causes shame’ is vividly por- 
trayed by that strong figure, that she is like ‘rotten- 
ness in his bones,’ eating away strength, and inflicting 
disfigurement and torture. 

Then come a pair of verses describing the inward and 
outward work of the two kinds of men as these affect 
others. The former verses dealt with their effects on 
the actors; the present, with their bearing on others. 
Inwardly, the good man has thoughts which serupu- 
lously keep the balance true and are just to his fellows, 
while the wicked plans to deceive for his own profit. 
When thoughts are translated into speech, deceit bears 
fruit in words which are like ambushes of murderers, 
laying traps to destroy, while the righteous man’s 
words are like angels of deliverance to the unsuspect- 
ing who are ready to fall into the snare. Selfishness, 
which is the root of wickedness, will be cruelty and 
injustice when necessary for its ends. The man who is 


vs. 1-15] WISDOM AND FOLLY 159 


wise because God is his centre and aim will be merciful 
and helpful. The basis of philanthropy is religion. 
The solemn importance attached to speech is observ- 
able. Words can slay as truly as swords. Now that 
the press has multiplied the power of speech, and 
the world is buzzing with the clatter of tongues, we 
all need to lay to heart the responsibilities and magic 
power of spoken and printed words, and ‘to set a watch 
on the door of our lips.’ 

Then follow a couple of verses dealing with the 
consequences to men themselves of their contrasted 
characters. The first of these (verse 7) recurs to the 
thought of verse 3, but with a difference. Not only the 
righteous himself, but his house, shall be established. 
The solidarity of the family and the entail of goodness 
are strongly insisted on in the Old Testament, though 
limitations are fully recognised. If a good man’s son 
continues his father’s character, he will prolong his 
father’s blessings; and in normal conditions, a parent's 
wisdom passes on to his children. Something is wrong 
when, as is so often the case, it does not; and it is not 
always the children’s fault. 

The overthrow of the wicked is set in striking con- 
trast with their plots to overthrow others. Their 
mischief comes back, like an Australian boomerang, to 
the hand that flings it; and contrariwise, delivering 
others is a sure way of establishing one’s self. Excep- 
tions there are, for the world-scheme is too compli- 
cated to be condensed into a formula; but all proverbs 
speak of the average usual results of virtue and vice, 
and those of this book do the same. Verse 8 asserts 
that, on the whole, honour attends goodness, and con-. 
tempt wickedness. Of course, companions in dis- 
sipation extol each other’s vices, and launch the old 





160 THE PROVERBS (CH. XII. 


threadbare sneers at goodness. But if wisdom were 
not set uppermost in men’s secret judgment, there 
would be no hypocrites, and their existence proves 
the truth of the proverb. 

Verse 9 seems suggested by ‘despised’ in yeas 8. 
There are two kinds of contempt—one which brands 
sin deservedly, one which vulgarly despises everybody 
who is not rich. A man need not mind, though his 
modest household is treated with contempt, if quiet 
righteousness reigns in it. It is better to be contented 
with little, and humble in a lowly place, than to be 
proud and hungry, as many were in the writer’s time 
and since. A foolish world set on wealth may despise, 
but its contempt breaks no bones. Self-conceit is poor 
diet. 

This seems to be the first of a little cluster of 
proverbs bearing on domestic life. It prefers modest 

mediocrity of station, such as Agur desired. Its suc- 
- cessor shows how the contrasted qualities come out 
in the two men’s relation to their domestic animals. 
Goodness sweeps a wide circle touching the throne of 
God and the stall of the cattle. It was not Coleridge 
who found out that ‘ He prayeth best who loveth best,’ 
but this old proverb-maker; and he could speak the 
thought without the poet’s exaggeration, which robs 
his expression of it of half its value. The original 
says ‘knoweth the soul, which may indeed mean, 
‘regardeth the life, but rather seems to suggest sym- 
pathetic interest in leading to an understanding of 
the dumb creature, which must precede all wise care 
for its well-being. It is a part of religion to try to 
enter into the mysterious feelings of our humble de- 
pendants in farmyard and stable. On the other hand, 
for want of such sympathetic interest, even when the 


vs. 1-15] WISDOM AND FOLLY 161 


‘wicked’ means to be kind, he does harm; or the word 
rendered ‘tender mercies’ may here mean the feelings 
(literally, ‘ bowels’) which, in their intense selfishness, 
are cruel even to animals. 

Verse 11 has no connection with the preceding, unless 
the link is common reference to home life and business, 
It contrasts the sure results of honest industry with 
the folly of speculation. The Revised Version margin 
‘vain things’ is better than the text ‘vain persons, 
which would give no antithesis to the patient tilling of 
the first clause. That verse would make an admirable 
motto to be stretched across the Stock Exchange, and 
like places on both sides of the Atlantic. How many 
ruined homes and heart-broken wives witness in 
America and England to its truth! The vulgar English 
proverb, ‘ What comes over the Devil’s back goes under 
his belly, says the same thing. The only way to get 
honest wealth is to work for it. Gambling in all its 
forms is rank folly. 

So the next proverb (verse 12) continues the same 
thought, and puts it in a somewhat difficult phrase. It 
goes a little deeper than the former, showing that the 
covetousness which follows after vain things, is really 
wicked lusting for unrighteous gain. ‘The net of evil- 
doers’ is better taken as in the margin (Rev. Ver.) ‘ prey’ 
or ‘spoil, and the meaning seems to be as just stated. 
Such hankering for riches, no matter how obtained, 
or such envying of the booty which admittedly has 
been won by roguery, is a mark of the wicked. How 
many professing church members have known that 
feeling in thinking of the millions of some railway 
king! Would they like the proverb to be applied to 
them ? 

The contrast to this is ‘the root of the righteous 

L 





162 THE PROVERBS (cH. XII. 


yields fruit,’ or ‘shoots forth, We have heard (verse 3) 
that it shall never be moved, being fixed in God; now 
we are told that it will produce all that is needful. A 
life rooted in God will unfold into all necessary good, 
which will be better than the spoil of the wicked. 
There are two ways of getting on—to struggle and 
fight and trample down rivals; one, to keep near God 
and wait for him. ‘Ye fight and war; ye have not, 
because ye ask not.’ 

The next two proverbs have in common a reference 
to the effect of speech upon the speaker. ‘In the trans- 
gression of the lips is an evil snare’; that is, sinful 
words ensnare their utterer, and whoever else he 
harms, he himself is harmed most. The reflex influ- 
ence on character of our utterances is not present to us, 
as it should be. They leave stains on lips and heart. 
Thoughts expressed are more definite and permanent 
thereby. A vicious thought clothed in speech has new 
power over the speaker. If we would escape from that 
danger, we must be righteous, and speak righteousness ; 
and then the same cause will deepen our convictions of 
‘whatsoever things are lovely and of good report.’ 

Verse 14 insists on this opposite side of the truth. 
Good words will bring forth fruit, which will satisfy 
the speaker, because, whatever effects his words may 
have on others, they will leave strengthened goodness 
and love of it in himself. ‘If the house be worthy, 
your peace shall rest upon it; if not, it shall return to 
you again. That reaction of words on oneself is but 
one case of the universal law of consequences coming 

back onus. Weare the architects of our own destinies. 
Every deed has an immortal life, and returns, either 
like a raven or a dove, to the man who sent it out on its 
flight. It comes back either croaking with blood on its 


vs. 1-15] POOR RICH AND RICH POOR 163 


beak, or cooing with an olive branch in its mouth. All 
life is at once sowing and reaping. A harvest comes 
in which retribution will be even more entire and 
accurate. 

The last proverb of the passage gives a familiar 
antithesis, and partially returns to the thought of 
verse 1. The fool has no standard of conduct but his 
own notions, and is absurdly complacent as to all his 
doings. The wise seeks better guidance than his own, 
and is docile, because he is not so ridiculously sure of 
his infallibility. No type of weak wickedness is more 
abominable to the proverbialist than that of pert self- 
conceit, which knows so little that it thinks it knows 
everything, and is ‘as untameable asa fly.’ But in the 
wisest sense, it is true that a mark of folly is self- 
. Opinionativeness; that a man who has himself for 
teacher has a fool for scholar; that the test of wisdom 
is willingness to be taught ; and, especially, that to bring 
a docile, humble spirit to the Source of all wisdom, and 
to ask counsel of God, is the beginning of true insight, 
and that the self-sufficiency which is the essence of 
sin, is never more fatal than when it is ignorant of 
guilt, and therefore spurns a Saviour. 


THE POOR RICH AND THE RICH POOR 


‘There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing: there is that maketh 
himself poor, yet hath great riches. —PROVERBS Xiii. 7. 


Two singularly-contrasted characters are set in oppo- 
sition here. One, that of a man who lives like a 
millionaire and is a pauper; another, that of a man 
who lives like a pauper and is rich. The latter char- 
acter, that of a man who hides and hoards his wealth, 
Was, perhaps, more common in the days when this 


164 THE PROVERBS [cH. XII. 


collection of Proverbs was put together, because in 
all ill-governed countries, to show wealth is a short 
way to get rid of it. But they have their modern 
representatives. We who live in a commercial com- 
munity have seen many a blown-out bubble soaring 
and glittering, and then collapsing into a drop of soap- 
suds, and on the other hand, we are always hearing 
of notes and bank-books being found stowed away in 
some wretched hovel where a miser has died. 

Now, I do not suppose that the author of this pro- 
verb attached any kind of moral to it in his own 
mind. It is simply a jotting of an observation drawn 
from a wide experience; and if he meant to teach 
any lesson by it, I suppose it was nothing more than 
that in regard to money, as to other things, we should 
avoid extremes, and should try to show what we are, 
and to be whatwe seem. But whilst thus I do not take 
it that there is any kind of moral or religious lesson 
in the writer’s mind, I may venture, perhaps, to take 
this saying as being a picturesque illustration, putting 
in vivid fashion certain great truths which apply in all 
regions of life, and which find their highest application 
in regard to Christianity, and our relation to Jesus 
Christ. There, too, ‘there is that maketh himself rich, 
and yet hath nothing; and there is that maketh him- 
self poor, and yet’—or one might, perhaps, say there- 
fore— hath great riches.’ It is from that point of view 
that I wish to look at the words at this time. I must 
begin with recalling to your mind, 

I. Our uriversal poverty. 

Whatever a man may think about himself, however 
he may estimate himself and conceit himself, there 
stand out two salient facts, the fact of universal de- 
pendence, and the fact of universal sinfulness, which 





ll 


v.7} POOR RICH AND RICH POOR 165 


ought to bear into every heart the consciousness of 
this poverty. A word or two about each of these 
two facts. 

First, the fact of universal dependence. Now, wise 
men and deep thinkers have found a very hard problem 
in the question of how it is possible that there should 
be an infinite God and a finite universe standing, as it 
were, over against Him. I am not going to trouble 
you with the all-but-just-succeeding answers to that 
great problem which the various systems of thinking 
have given. These lie apart from my present purpose. 
But what I would point out is that, whatever else may 
be dark and difficult about the co-existence of these 
two, the infinite God and the finite universe, this at 
least is sun-clear, that the creature depends absolutely 
_ for everything on that infinite Creator. People talk 
sometimes, and we are all too apt to think, as if God 
had made the world and left it. And we are all too 
apt to think that, however we may owe the origination 
of our own personal existence to a divine act, the act 
was done when we began to be, and the life was given 
as a gift that could be separated from the Bestower. 
But that is not the state of the case atall. The real 
fact is that life is only continued because of the con- 
tinued operation on every living thing, just as being is 
only continued by reason of the continued operation 
on every existing thing, of the Divine Power. ‘In Him 
we live, and the life is the result of the perpetual 
impartation from Himself ‘in whom all things consist, 
according to the profound word of the Apostle. Their 
being depends on their union with Him. If it were 
possible to cut a sunbeam in two, so that the further 
half of it should be separated from its vital union with 
the great central fire from which it rushed long, long 





166 THE PROVERBS [CH. XIII. 


ago, that further half would pale into darkness. And 
if you cut the connection between God and the creature, 
the creature shrivels into nothing. By Him the spring 
buds around us unfold themselves; by Him all things 
are. So, at the very foundation of our being there lies 
absolute dependence. 

In like manner, all that we call faculties, capacities, 
and the like, are, in a far deeper sense than the con- 
ventional use of the word ‘ gift’ implies, bestowments 
from Him. The Old Testament goes to the root of the 
matter when, speaking of the artistic and esthetic 
skill of the workers in the fine arts in the Tabernacle, 
it says, ‘the Spirit of the Lord’ taught Bezaleel; and 
when, even in regard to the brute strength of Samson— 
surely the strangest hero of faith that ever existed— 
it says that when ‘the Spirit of the Lord came upon 
him, into his giant hands there was infused the 
strength by which he tore the lion’s jaws asunder. 
In like manner, all the faculties that men possess they 
have simply because He has given them. ‘What hast 
thou that thou hast not received? If thou hast re- 
ceived, why dost thou boast thyself?’ So there is a 
great psalm that gathers everything that makes up 
human life, and traces it all to God, when it says, 
‘They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness 
of Thy house,’ for from God comes all that sustains us; 
‘Thou shalt make them drink of the river of Thy 
pleasures, for from God comes all that gladdens us; 
‘with Thee is the fountain of life, for from Him flow 
all the tiny streams that make the life of all that live; 
‘in Thy light shall we see light,’ for every power of 
perceiving, and all grace and lustre of purity, owe 
their source to Him. As well, then, might the pitcher 
boast itself of the sparkling water that it only holds, 


v.7] POOR RICH AND RICH POOR 167 


as well might the earthen jar plume itself on the 
treasure that has been deposited in it, as we make 
ourselves rich because of the riches that we have re- 
ceived. ‘Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, 
neither let the mighty man glory in his strength. Let 
not the rich man glory in his riches; but he that 
glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.’ 

Then, turn for a moment to the second of the facts 
on which this universal poverty depends, and that is 
the fact of universal sinfulness. Ah! there is one thing 
that is our own— 


‘If any power we have, it is to will.’ 


We have that strange faculty, which nobody has ever 
thoroughly explained yet, but which we all know to 
exist, of wrenching ourselves so far away from God, 
‘in whom we live and move and have our being,’ that 
we can make our thoughts and ways, not merely lower 
than, but contradictory of, and antagonistic to, His 
thoughts, and His ways. Conscience tells us, and we 
all know it, that we are the causes of our own actions, 
though from Him come the powers by which we do 
them. The electricity comes from the central power- 
station, but it depends on us what sort of wheels we 
make it drive, and what kind of work we set it to 
do. Make all allowances you like for cireumstances— 
what they call nowadays ‘environment, by which for- 
midable word some people seem to think that they 
have explained away a great many difficulties—make 
all allowances you like for inheritance—what they now 
call ‘heredity,’ by which other magic word people seem 
to think that they may largely obliterate the sense of 
responsibility and sin—allow as: much as you like, in 
reason, for these, and there remains the indestructible 





168 THE PROVERBS (cH. XIII. 


consciousness in every man, ‘I did it, and it was my 
fault that I did it; and the moral guilt remains.’ 

So, then, there are these two things, universal de- 
pendence and universal sinfulness, and on them is built 
the declaration of universal poverty. Duty is debt. 
Everybody knows that the two words come from the 
same root. What we ought is what we owe. Weall 
owe an obedience which none of us has rendered. Ten 
thousand talents is the debt and—‘they had nothing 
to pay. We are like bankrupts that begin business 
with a borrowed capital, by reason of our absolute 
dependence; and so manage their concerns as to find 
themselves inextricably entangled in a labyrinth of obli- 
gations which they cannotdischarge. Weare all paupers. 
And so I come to the second point, and that is— 

II. The poor rich man. 

‘There is that maketh himself rich, and yet hath 
nothing.’ That describes accurately the type of man of 
whom there are thousands; of whom there are dozens 
listening to me at this moment; who ignores depend- 
ence and is not conscious of sin, and so struts about in 
self-complacent satisfaction with himself, and knows 
nothing of his true condition. There is nothing more 
tragic—and so it would be seen to be if it were not so” 
common—than that a man, laden, as we each of us are, 
with a burden of evil that we cannot get rid of, should 
yet conceit himself to possess merits, virtues, graces, 
that ought to secure for him the admiration of his 
fellows, or, at least, to exempt him from their censure, 
and which he thinks, when he thinks about it at all, 
may perhaps secure for him the approbation of God. 
‘The deceitfulness of sin’ is one of its mightiest powers. 
There is nothing that so blinds a man to the real 
moral character of actions as that obstinate self-com- 


v.7]} POOR RICH AND RICH POOR 169 


placency which approves of a thing because it is mine. 
You condemn in other people the very things you do 
yourself. You see all their ugliness in them; you do 
not recognise it when it is your deed. Many of you 
have never ventured upon a careful examination and 
appraisement of your own moral and religious char- 
acter. You durst not, for you are afraid that it would 
turn out badly. So, like some insolvent who has 
not the courage to face the facts, you take refuge 
in defective bookkeeping, and think that that is as 
good as being solvent. Then you have far too lowa 
standard, and one of the main reasons why you have 
so low a standard is just because the sins that you do 
have dulled your consciences, and like the Styrian 
peasants that eat arsenic, the poison does not poison 
you, and you do not feel yourself any the worse for 
it. Dear brethren! these are very rude things for me 
to say to you. I am saying them to myself as much 
as to you, and I would to God that you would 
listen to them, not because I say them, but because 
they are true. The great bulk of us know our own 
moral characters just as little as we know the sound 
of our own voices. I suppose if you could hear your- 
self speak you would say, ‘I never knew that my voice 
sounded like that.’ And I am quite sure that many of 
you, if the curtain could be drawn aside which is 
largely woven out of the black yarn of your own evil 
thoughts, and you could see yourselves as in a mirror, 
you would say, ‘I had no notion that I looked like 
that.’ ‘There is that maketh himself rich, and yet 
hath nothing.’ 

Ay! and more than that. The making of yourself 
rich is the sure way to prevent yourself from ever being 
so. Weseethatin all other regionsoflife. Ifastudent 





170 THE PROVERBS (cH. x11. 


says to himself, ‘Oh! I know all that subject,’ the 
chances are that he will not get it up any more; and 
the further chance is that he will be ‘ploughed’ when 
the examination-day comes. If the artist stands 
before the picture, and says to himself, ‘Well done, 
that is the realisation of my ideal!’ he will paint no 
more anything worth looking at. And in any depart- 
ment, when a man says ‘Lo! I have attained, then he 
ceases to advance. 

Now, bring all that to bear upon religion, upon Christ 
and His salvation, upon our own spiritual and religious 
and moral condition. The sense of imperfection is the 
salt of approximation to perfection. And the man 
that says ‘I am rich’ is condemning himself to poverty 
and pauperism. If you do not know your need, you 
will not go to look for the supply of it. If you fancy 
yourselves to be quite well, though a mortal disease 
has gripped you, you will take no medicine, nor 
have recourse to any physician. If you think that 
you have enough good to show for man’s judgment 
and for God’s, and have not been convinced of your 
dependence and your sinfulness, then Jesus Christ will 
be very little to you, and His great work as the 
Redeemer and Saviour of His people from their sins 
will be nothing to you. And so you will condemn your- 
selves to have nothing unto the very end.’ 

I believe that this generation needs few things 
more than it needs a deepened consciousness of the 
reality of sin and of the depth and damnable nature 
of it. It is because people feel so little of the burden 
of their transgression that they care so little for that 
gentle Hand that lifts away their burden. Itis because 
from much of popular religion—and, alas! that I 
should have to say it, from much of popular preach- 


v.7] POOR RICH AND RICH POOR 171 


ing—there has vanished the deep wholesome sense of 
poverty, that, from so much of popular religion, and 
preaching too, there has faded away the central light 
of the Gospel, the proclamation of the Cross by which 
is taken away the sin of the whole world. 

So, lastly, my text brings before us— 

III. The rich poor man. 

‘There is that maketh himself poor and yet’—or, as 
varied, the expression is, ‘therefore hath great riches.’ 
Jesus Christ has lifted the thoughts in my text into 
the very region into which I am trying to bring them, 
when in the first of all the Beatitudes, as they are 
called, ‘He opened His mouth and said, Blessed are the 
poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.’ 
Poor, and therefore an owner of a kingdom! Now I 
need not, at this stage of my sermon, insist upon the 
fact that that consciousness of poverty is the only 
fitting attitude for any of us to take up in view of 
the two facts with which I started, the fact of our 
dependence and the fact of our sinfulness. What 
absurdity it seems for a man about whom these two 
things are true, that, as I said, he began with a borrowed 
capital, and has only incurred greater debts in his 
transactions, there should be any foothold left in his 
own estimation on which he can stand and claim to be 
anything but the pauper that heis. Oh! brethren, of 
all the hallucinations that we put upon ourselves in 
trying to believe that things are as we wish, there 
is none more subtle, more obstinate, more deeply 
dangerous than this, that a man full of evil should 
be so ignorant of his evil as to say, like that Pharisee 
in our Lord’s parable, ‘I thank Thee that Iam not as 
other men are. I give tithes...I pray...I am 
this, that, and the other thing; not like that wretched 





172 THE PROVERBS (oH. XIII. 


publican over there.’ Yes, this is the fit attitude for us, 
— He would not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven.’ 

Then let me remind you that this wholesome recogni- 
tion of facts about ourselves as they are is the sure 
way to possess the wealth. Of course, it is possible 
for a man by some mighty influence or other brought 
to bear upon him, to see himself as God sees him, and 
then, if there is nothing more than that, he is tortured 
with ‘the sorrow that worketh death.’ Judas ‘went 
out and hanged himself’; Peter ‘went out and wept 
bitterly.’ The one was sent ‘to his own place, wherever 
that was; the other was sent foremost of the Twelve. 
If you see your poverty, let self-distrust be the nadir, 
the lowest point, and let faith be the complementary 
high point, the zenith. The rebound from self-distrust 
to trust in Christ is that which makes the consciousness 
of poverty the condition of receiving wealth. 

And what wealth it is!—the wealth of a peaceful 
conscience, of a quiet heart, of lofty aims, of a pure 
mind, of strength according to our need, of an immortal 
hope, of a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, 
‘where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt; where 
thieves do not break through nor steal.’ Blessed be 
God! the more we have the riches of glory in Christ 
Jesus, the more shall we feel that we have nothing, 
and that all is His, and none of it ours. And so, as the 
rivers run in the valleys, and the high mountain-tops 
are dry and barren, the grace which makes us rich will 
run in the low ground of our conscious humiliation 
and nothingness. 

Dear brother! do you estimate yourself as you are? 
Have you taken stock of yourself? Have you got 
away from the hallucination of possessing wealth? 
Has your sense of need led you to cease from trust in 


v.7] THE TILLAGE OF THE POOR 178 


yourself, and to put all your trust in Jesus Christ? 
Have you taken the wealth which He freely gives to 
all who sue in forma pauperis? He does not ask you 
to bring anything but debts and sins, emptiness and 
weakness, and penitent faith. He will strengthen the 
weakness, fill the emptiness, forgive the sins, cancel the 
debts, and make you ‘rich toward God.’ I beseech you 
to listen to Him, speaking from heaven, and taking up 
the strain of this text: ‘ Because thou sayest I am rich, 
and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; 
and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miser- 
able, and poor, and blind, and naked, I counsel thee to 
buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be 
rich. And then you will be of those blessed poor ones 
who are ‘rich through faith, and heirs of the Kingdom.’ 


THE TILLAGE OF THE POOR 


Much food is in the tillage of the poor.’—PROVERBS xiii. 23. 


PALESTINE was a land of small peasant proprietors, and 
the institution of the Jubilee was intended to prevent 
the acquisition of large estates by any Israelite. The 
consequence, as intended, was a level of modest pro- 
sperity. It was ‘the tillage of the poor, the careful, 
diligent husbandry of the man who had only a little 
patch of land to look after, that filled the storehouses 
of the Holy Land. Hence the proverb of our text 
arose. It preserves the picture of the economical con- 
ditions in which it originated, and it is capable of, and 
is intended to have, an application to all forms and 
fields of work. In all it is true that the bulk of the 
harvested results are due, not to the large labours of 
the few, but to the minute, unnoticed toils of the 





174 THE PROVERBS [CH. XIII. 


many. Small service is true service, and the aggregate 
of such produces large crops. Spade husbandry gets 
most out of the ground. The labourer’s allotment of 
half an acre is generally more prolific than the average 
of the squire’s estate. Much may be made of slender 
gifts, small resources, and limited opportunities if care- 
fully cultivated, as they should be, and as their very 
slenderness should stimulate their being. 

One of the psalms accuses ‘ the children of Ephraim’ 
because, ‘ being armed and carrying bows, they turned 
back in the day of battle.’ That saying deduces obliga- 
tion from equipment, and preaches a stringent code of 
duty to those who are in any direction largely gifted. 
Power to its last particle is duty, and not small is the 
crime of those who, with great capacities, have small 
desire to use them, and leave the brunt of the battle to 
half-trained soldiers, badly armed. 

But the imagery of the fight is not sufficient to 
include all aspects of Christian effort. The peaceful 
toil of the ‘husbandman that labours’ stands, in one 
of Paul’s letters, side by side with the heroism of the 
‘man that warreth. Our text gives us the former 
image, and so supplements that other. 

It completes the lesson of the psalm in another 
respect, as insisting on the importance, not of the 
well endowed, but of the slenderly furnished, who are 
immensely in the majority. This text is a message to 
ordinary, mediocre people, without much ability or 
influence. 

I. It teaches, first, the responsibility of small gifts. 

It is no mere accident that in our Lord’s great 
parable He represents the man with the one talent as 
the hider of his gift. There is a certain pleasure in 
doing what we can do, or fancy we can do, well. 


v.23] THE TILLAGE OF THE POOR 175 


There is a certain pleasure in the exercise of any 
kind of gift, be it of body or mind; but when we 
know that we are but very slightly gifted by Him, 
there is a temptation to say, ‘Oh! it does not matter 
much whether I contribute my share to this, that, or 
the othér work or no. I am but a poor man. My 
half-crown will make but a small difference in the 
total. I am possessed of very little leisure. The few 
minutes that I can spare for individual cultivation, 
or for benevolent work, will not matter at all. I am 
only an insignificant unit; nobody pays any attention 
to my opinion. It does not in the least signify 
whether I make my influence felt in regard of social, 
religious, or political questions, and the like. I can 
leave all that to the more influential men. My little- 
ness at least has the prerogative of immunity. My 
little finger would produce such a slight impact on 
the scale that it is indifferent whether I apply it or 
not. It is a good deal easier for me to wrap up my 
talent—which, after all, is only a threepenny bit, and 
not a talent—and put it away and do nothing.’ 

Yes, but then you forget, dear friend! that responsi- 
bility does not diminish with the size of the gifts, but 
that there is as great responsibility for the use of 
the smallest as for the use of the largest, and that 
although it does not matter very much to anybody 
but yourself what you do, it matters all the world to 
you. 

But then, besides that, my text tells us that it does 
matter whether the poor man sets himself to make 
the most of his little patch of ground or not. ‘ There is 
much food in the tillage of the poor.’ The slenderly 
endowed are the immense majority. There is a genius 
or two here and there, dotted along the line of the 





176 THE PROVERBS [CH. XIII. 


world’s and the Church's history. The great men and 
wise men and mighty men and wealthy men may be 
counted by units, but the men that are not very much 
of anything are to be counted by millions. And unless 
we can find some stringent law of responsibility that 
applies to them, the bulk of the human race will be 
under no obligation to do anything either for God or 
for their fellows, or for themselves. ‘ If I am absolved 
from the task of bringing my weight to bear on the 
side of right because my weight is infinitesimal, and I 
am only one in a million, suppose all the million were 
to plead the same excuse; what then? Then there 
would not be any weight on the side of the right at 
all. The barns in Palestine were not filled by farming 
on a great scale like that pursued away out on the 
western prairies, where one man will own, and his 
servants will plough a furrow for miles long, but they 
were filled by the small industries of the owners of 
tiny patches. 

The ‘tillage of the poor, meaning thereby not the 
mendicant, but the peasant owner of a little plot, 
yielded the bulk of the ‘food.’ The wholesome old 
proverb, ‘many littles make a mickle,’ is as true about 
the influence brought to bear in the world to arrest 
evil and to sweeten corruption as it is about anything 
besides. Christ has a great. deal more need of the 
cultivation of the small patches that He gives to the 
most of us than He has even of the cultivation of 
the large estates that He bestows on afew. Responsi- 
bility is not to be measured by amount of gift, but is 
equally stringent, entire, and absolute whatsoever be 
the magnitude of the endowments from which it 
arises. 

Let me remind you, too, how the same virtues and 


v.23) THE TILLAGE OF THE POOR 177 


excellences can be practised in the administering of 
the smallest as in that of the greatest gifts. Men say 
—I dare say some of you have said—‘Oh! if I were 
eloquent like So-and-so; rich like somebody else; a 
man of weight and importance like some other, how 
I would consecrate my powers to the Master! But I 
am slow of speech, or nobody minds me, or I have 
but very little that I can give. Yes! ‘He that is 
faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much.’ 
If you do not utilise the capacity possessed, to increase 
the estate would only be to increase the crop of weeds 
from its uncultivated clods. We never palm off a 
greater deception on ourselves than when we try to 
hoodwink conscience by pleading bounded gifts as an 
excuse for boundless indolence, and to persuade our- 
selves that if we could do more we should be less 
inclined to do nothing. The most largely endowed 
has no more obligation and no fairer field than the 
most slenderly gifted lies under and possesses. 

All service coming from the same motive and tend- 
ing to the same end is the same with God. Not the 
magnitude of the act, but the motive thereof, deter- 
mines the whole character of the life of which it is 
a part. The same graces of obedience, consecration, 
quick sympathy, self-denying effort may be cultivated 
and manifested in the spending of a halfpenny as in 
the administration of millions. The smallest rainbow 
in the tiniest drop that hangs from some sooty eave 
and catches the sunlight has precisely the same lines, 
in the same order, as the great arch that strides across 
half the sky. If you go to the Giant’s Causeway, or to 
the other end of it amongst the Scotch Hebrides, you 
will find the hexagonal basaltic pillars all of identically 
the same pattern and shape, whether their height be 

M 





178 THE PROVERBS (oH. XII. 


measured by feet or by tenths of an inch. Big or 
little, they obey exactly the same law. There is ‘much 
food in the tillage of the poor.’ 

II. But now, note, again, how there must be a 
diligent cultivation of the small gifts. 

The inventor of this proverb had looked carefully 
and sympathetically at the way in which the little 
peasant proprietors worked; and he saw in that a 
pattern for all life. It is not always the case, of 
course, that a little holding means good husbandry, 
but it is generally so; and you will find few waste 
corners and few unweeded patches on the ground of 
a man whose whole ground is measured by rods in- 
stead of by miles. There will usually be little waste 
time, and few neglected opportunities of working in 
the case of the peasant whose subsistence, with that 
of his family, depends on the diligent and wise crop- 
ping of the little patch that does belong to him. 

And so, dear brethren! if you and I have to take 
our place in the ranks of the one-talented men, the 
commonplace run of ordinary people, the more reason 
for us to enlarge our gifts by a sedulous diligence, by 
an unwearied perseverance, by a keen look-out for all 
opportunities of service, and above all by a prayerful 
dependence upon Him from whom alone comes the 
power to toil, and who alone gives the increase. The 
less we are conscious of large gifts the more we should 
be bowed in dependence on Him from whom cometh 
‘every good and perfect gift’; and who gives according 
to His wisdom; and the more earnestly should we 
use that slender possession which God may have given 
us. Industry applied to small natural capacity will do 
far more than larger power rusted away by sloth. 
You all know that it is so in regard of daily life, and 


v.23) THE TILLAGE OF THE POOR 179 


common business, and the acquisition of mundane 
sciences and arts. It is just as true in regard to the 
Christian race, and to the Christian Church’s work of 
witness. 

Who are they who have done the most in this world 
for God and for men? The largely endowed men? 
‘Not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble 
are called.’ The coral insect is microscopic, but it will 
build up from the profoundest depth of the ocean a 
reef against which the whole Pacific may dash in vain. 
It is the small gifts that, after all, are the important 
ones. So let us cultivate them the more earnestly the 
more humbly we think of our own capacity. ‘Play 
well thy part; there all the honour lies. God, who 
has builded up some of the towering Alps out of mica- 
flakes, builds up His Church out of infinitesimally 
small particles—slenderly endowed men touched by 
the consecration of His love. 

III. Lastly, let me remind you of the harvest reaped 
from these slender gifts when sedulously tilled. 

Two great results of such conscientious cultivation 
and use of small resources and opportunities may be 
suggested as included in that abundant ‘food’ of which 
the text speaks. 

The faithfully used faculty increases. ‘To him that 
hath shall be given.’ ‘Oh! if I had a wider sphere 
how I would flame in it, and fill it!’ Then twinkle 
your best in your little sphere, and that will bring a 
wider one some time or other. For, as a rule, and in 
the general, though with exceptions, opportunities 
come to the man that can use them; and roughly, but 
yet substantially, men are set in this world where they 
can shine to the most advantage to God. Fill your 
place; and if you, like Paul, have borne witness for 





180 THE PROVERBS [cH. XIm. 


the Master in little Jerusalem, He will not keep you 
there, but carry you to bear witness for Him in 
imperial Rome itself. 

The old fable of the man who told his children to 
dig all over the field and they would find treasure, 
has its true application in regard to Christian effort 
and faithful stewardship of the gifts bestowed upon 
us. The sons found no gold, but they improved the 
field, and secured its bearing golden harvests, and they 
strengthened their own muscles, which was better 
than gold. So if we want larger endowments let us 
honestly use what we possess, and use will make growth. 

The other issue, about which I need not say more 
than a word, is that the final reward of all faithful 
service—‘ Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord’ is said, 
not to the brilliant, but to the ‘faithful’ servant. In 
that great parable, which is the very text-book of 
this whole subject of gifts and responsibilities and 
recompense, the men who were entrusted with un- 
equal sums used these unequal sums with equal 
diligence, as is manifest by the fact that they realised 
an equal rate of increase. He that got two talents 
made two more out of them, and he that had five did 
no more; for he, too, but doubled his capital. So, 
because the poorer servant with his two, and the 
richer with his ten, had equally cultivated their 
diversely-measured estates, they were identical in 
reward; and to each of them the same thing is said: 
‘Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. It matters 
little whether we copy some great picture upon a 
canvas as big as the side of a house, or upon a thumb- 
nail; the main thing is that we copy it. If we truly 
employ whatsoever gifts God has given to us, then 
we shall be accepted according to that we have, and 
not according to that we have not. 


SIN THE MOCKER 


* Fools make a mock at sin: but among the ada there is favour.’— 
PROVERBS xiv. 9. 


THE wisdom of this Book of Proverbs is not simply 
intellectual, but it has its roots in reverence and obedi- 
ence to God, and for its accompaniment, righteousness. 
The wise man is the good man, and the good man is 
the godly man. And as is wisdom, so its opposite, folly, 
is not only intellectual feebleness—the bad man is a 
fool, and the godless is a bad man. The greatest 
amount of brain-power cultivated to the highest degree 
does not make a man wise, and about many a student 
and thinker God pronounces the sentence ‘Thou fool!’ 

That does not mean that all sin is ignorance, as we 
sometimes hear it said with a great show of tolerant 
profundity. There is some ignorance in all sin, but the 
essence of sin is the aversion of the will from a law and 
from a Person, not the defect of the understanding. So 
far from all sin being but ignorance, and therefore 
blameless, there is no sin without knowledge, and the 
measure of ignorance is the measure of blamelessness ; 
unless the ignorance be itself, as it often is, criminal. 
Ignorance is one thing, folly is another. 

One more remark by way of introduction must be 
made on the language of our text. The margin of the 
Revised Version correctly turns it completely round, 
and for ‘the foolish make a mock at guilt, would read, 
‘guilt mocketh at the foolish.’ In the original the verb 
in our text is in the singular, and the only singular 
noun to go with it is ‘guilt. The thought then here is, 
that sin tempts men into its clutches, and then gibes 
and taunts them. It is a solemn and painful subject, 
but perhaps this text rightly pondered may help to 


181 





182 THE PROVERBS [CH. XIV. 


save some of us from hearing the mocking laugh which 
echoes through the empty chambers of many an empty 
soul. 

I. Sin mocks us by its broken promises. 

The object immediately sought by any wrong act 
may be attained. In sins of sense, the appetite is 
gratified ; in other sins, the desire that urged to them 
attains its end. But what then? The temptation lay 
in the imagination that, the wrong thing being done, 
an inward good would result, and it does not; for even 
if the immediate object be secured, other results, all 
unforeseen, force themselves on us which spoil the 
hoped for good. The sickle cuts down tares as well as 
wheat, and the reaper’s hands are filled with poisonous 
growths as well as with corn. There is a revulsion of 
feeling from the thing that before the sin was done 
attracted. The hideous story of the sin of David’s son, 
Amnon, puts in ugliest shape the universal experience 
of men who are tempted to sin and are victims of the 
revulsion that follows—He ‘hated her exceedingly, so 
that the hatred wherewith he hated her was greater 
than the love wherewith he had loved her.’ Conscience, 
which was overpowered and unheard amid the loud 
cries of desire, speaks. We find out the narrow limits 
of satisfaction. The satisfied appetite has no further 
driving power, but lies down to sleep off its debauch, 
and ceases to be a factor for the time. Inward discord, 
the schism between duty and inclination, sets up strife 
in the very sanctuary of the soul. We are dimly 
conscious of the evil done as robbing us of power 
to do right. We cannot pray, and would be glad to 
forget God. And a self thus racked, impoverished, and 
weakened, is what a man gains by the sin that pro- 
mised him so much and hid so much from him, 


v.9] SIN THE MOCKER 188 


Or if these consequences are in any measure silenced 
and stifled, a still more melancholy mockery betrays 
him, in the continuance of the illusion that he is happy 
and all is well, when all the while he is driving head- 
long to destruction. Many a man orders his life so 
that it is like a ship that sails with huzzas and 
bedizened with flags while a favouring breeze fills its 
sails, but comes back to port battered and all but 
waterlogged, with its canvas ‘lean, rent, and beggared 
by the strumpet wind.’ It is always a mistake to try to 
buy happiness by doing wrong. The price is rigorously 
demanded, but the quid pro quo is not given, or if it 
seems to be so, there is something else given too, which 
takes all the savour out of the composite whole. The 
‘Folly’ of the earlier half of this book woos men by 
her sweet invitations, and promises the sweetness of 
stolen waters and the pleasantness of bread eaten in 
secret, but she hides the fact, which the listener to her 
seducing voice has to find out for himself after he has 
drunk of the stolen waters and tasted the maddening 
pleasantness of her bread eaten in secret, that ‘her 
guests are in the depths of Sheol.’ The temptations 
that seek to win us to do wrong and dazzle us by fair 
visions are but ‘juggling fiends that keep the word of 
promise to the ear, and break it to the hope.’ 

{I. Sin mocks fools by making them its slaves. 

There is not only a revulsion of feeling from the evil 
thing done that was so tempting before, but there is a 
dreadful change in the voice of the temptress. Before 
her victim had done the sin, she whispered hints of 
how little a thing it was. ‘Don’t make such a moun- 
tain of a molehill. It isa very small matter. You can 
easily give it up when you like.’ But when the deed is 
done, then her mocking laugh rings out, ‘I have got 





184 THE PROVERBS [on. xIv. 


you now and you cannot get away. The prey is 
seduced into the trap by a carefully prepared bait, and 
as soon as its hesitating foot steps on to the slippery 
floor, down falls the door and escape is impossible. 
We are tempted to sin by the delusion that we are 
shaking off restraints that fetter our manhood, and that 
it is spirited to do as we like, and as soon as we have 
sinned we discover that we were pleasing not ourselves 
but a taskmaster, and that while the voice said, ‘Show 
yourself a man, beyond these petty, old-fashioned 
maxims’; the meaning of it was, ‘Become my slave.’ 

Sin grows in accordance with an awful necessity, so 
that it is never in a sinner’s power to promise himself 
‘It is only this one time that I will do the wrong 
thing. Let me have one lapse and I will abjure the 
evil for ever after. We have to reckon with the 
tremendous power of habit, and to bethink ourselves 
that a man may never commit a given sin, but that if 
he has committed it once, it is all but impossible that 
he will stop there. The incline is too slippery and the 
ice too smooth to risk a foot on it. Habit dominates, 
outward circumstances press, there springs up a need 
for repeating the draught, and for its being more 
highly spiced. Sin begets sin as fast as the green flies 
which infest rose-bushes. One has heard of slavers on 
the African coast speaking negroes fair, and tempting 
them on board by wonderful promises, but once the 
poor creatures are in the ship, then on with the hatches 
and, if need be, the chains. 

III. Sin mocks fools by unforeseen consequences. 

These are carefully concealed or madly disregarded, 
while we are in the stage of merely being tempted, but 
when we have done the evil, they are unmasked, like a 
battery against a detachment that has been trapped. 


v.9] SIN THE MOCKER 185 


The previous denial that anything will come of the 
sin, and the subsequent proclamation that this ugly 
issue has come of it, are both parts of sin’s mockery, 
and one knows not which is the more fiendish, the 
laugh with which she promises impunity or that with 
which she tells of the certainty of retribution. We 
may be mocked, but ‘God is not mocked. Whatever 
a man soweth, that’—and not some other growth— 
‘shall he also reap.’ We dwell in an all-related order 
of things, in which no act but has its appropriate 
consequences, and in which it is only fools who say to 
themselves, ‘I did not think it would matter much.’ 
Each act of ours is at once sowing and reaping; a 
sowing, inasmuch as it sets in motion a train the issues 
of which may not be realised by us till the act has long 
been forgotten; a reaping, inasmuch as what we are 
and do to-day is the product of what we were and did 
in a forgotten past. We are what we are, because we 
were long ago what we were. As in these composite 
photographs, which are produced by laying one indi- 
vidual likeness on another, our present selves have our 
past selves preserved in them. We do not need to 
bring in a divine Judge into human life in order to be 
sure that, by the play of the natural laws of cause and 
effect, ‘every transgression and disobedience receives 
its just recompense of reward. Given the world as it 
is, and the continuous identity of a man, and you have 
all that is needed for an Iliad of woes flowing from 
every life that makes terms with sin. If we gather 
into one dismal pile the weakening of power for good, 
the strengthening of impulses to evil, the inward 
poverty, the unrest, the gnawings of conscience or its 
silence, the slavery under evil often loathed even while 
it is being obeyed, the dreary sense of inability to mend 





186 THE PROVERBS [CH. XIV. 


oneself, and often the wreck of outward life which 
dog our sins like sleuth-hounds, surely we shall not 
need to imagine a future tribunal in order to be sure 
that sin is a murderess, or to hear her laugh as she 
mocks her helpless victims. | 

But as surely as there are in this present world 
experiences which must be regarded as consequences 
of sin, so surely do they all assume a more dreadful 
character and take on the office of prophets of a 


future. If man lives beyond the grave, there is nothing - 


to suggest that he will there put off character as he 
puts off the bodily life. He will be there what he has 
made himself here. Only he will be so more intensely, 
more completely. The judgments of earth foretell and 
foreshadow a judgment beyond earth. 

There is but one more word that I would say, and it 
is this. Jesus has come to set the captives of sin free 
from its mockery, its tyranny, its worst consequences. 
He breaks the power of past evil to domineer over us. 
He gives us a new life within, which has no heritage 
of evil to pervert it, no memories of evil to discourage 
it, no bias towards evil to lead it astray. As for the 
sins that we have done, He is ready to, forgive, to seal 
to us God’s forgiveness, and to take from our own self- 
condemnation all its bitterness and much of its hope- 
lessness. For the past, His blood has taken away its 
guilt and power. For the future it sets us free from 
the mockery of our sin, and assures us of a future 
which will not be weakened or pained by remembrances 
of a sinful past. Sin mocks at fools, but they who 
have Christ for their Redeemer, their Righteousness, and 
their Life can smile at her impotent rage, and mock at 
her and her impotent attempts to terrify them and 
assert her lost power with vain threats. 


Se a 


HOLLOW LAUGHTER, SOLID JOY 


* Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; and the end of that mirth is heavi- 
ness.’—PROVERBS xiv, 13. 


‘These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy may be in you, and that your 

joy may be fulfilled.’—Joun xv. 11(R.V.). 
A POET, who used to be more fashionable than he is 
now, pronounces ‘happiness’ to be our being’s end and 
aim. That is not true, except under great limitations 
and with many explanations. It may be regarded as 
God’s end, but it is ruinous to make it man’s aim. It is 
by no means the highest conception of the Gospel to 
say that it makes men happy, however true it may be. 
The highest is that it makes them good. I put these 
two texts together, not only because they bring out the 
contrast between the laughter which is hollow and 
fleeting and the joy which is perfect and perpetual, 
but also because they suggest to us the difference in 
kind and object between earthly and heavenly joys; 
which difference underlies the other between the 
boisterous laughter in which is no mirth and no con- 
tinuance and the joy which is deep and abiding. 

In the comparison which I desire to make between 
these two texts we must begin with that which is 
deepest, and consider— 

I. The respective objects of earthly and heavenly 
joy. 

. Our Lord’s wonderful words suggest that they who 
accept His sayings, that they who have His word 
abiding in them, have in a very deep sense His joy 
implanted in their hearts, to brighten and elevate their 


joys as the sunshine flashes into silver the ripples of 
187 





188 THE PROVERBS (ca. x1v. 


the lake. What then were the sources of the calm joys 
of ‘the Man of Sorrows’? Surely His was the perfect 
instance of ‘rejoicing in the Lord always’—an unbroken 
communion with the Father. The consciousness that 
the divine pleasure ever rested on Him, and that all 
His thoughts, emotions, purposes, and acts were in 
perfect harmony with the perfect will of the perfect 
God, filled His humanity up to the very brim with 
gladness which the world could not take away, and 
which remains for us for ever as a type to which all 
our gladness must be conformed if it is to be worthy of 
Him and of us. As one of the Psalmists says, God is to 
be ‘the gladness of our joy.’ It is in Him, gazed upon 
by the faith and love of an obedient spirit, sought after 
by aspiration and possessed inwardly in peaceful com- 
munion, confirmed by union with Him in the acts of 
daily obedience, that the true joy of every human life 
is to be realised. They who have drunk of this deep 
fountain of gladness will not express their joy in 
boisterous laughter, which is the hollower the louder 
it is, and the less lasting the more noisy, but will mani- 
fest itself ‘in the depth and not the tumult of the soul.’ 

Nor must we forget that ‘My joy’ co-existed with a 
profound experience of sorrow to which no human 
sorrow was ever like. Let us not forget that, while 
His joy filled His soul to the brim, He was ‘ acquainted 
with grief’; and let us not wonder if the strange sur- 
face contradiction is repeated in ourselves. It is more 
Christlike to have inexpressibly deep joy with surface 
sorrow, than to have a shallow laughter ——— a 
hurtful sorrow. : 

We have to set the sources of earthly gladness side 
by side with those of Christ's joy to be aware of a con- 
trast. His sprang from within, the world’s is drawn 


v. 13] LAUGHTER AND JOY 189 


from without. His came from union with the Father, 
the world’s largely depends on ignoring God. His 
needed no supplies from the gratifications ministered 
by sense, and so independent of the presence or absence 
of such; the world’s need the constant contributions 
of outward good, and when these are cut off they droop 
and die. He who depends on outward circumstances 
for his joy is the slave of externals and the sport of 
time and chance. 

Il. The Christian’s joy is full, the world’s partial. 

All human joys touch but part of our nature, the 
divine fills and satisfies all. In the former there is 
always some portion of us unsatisfied, like the deep pits 
on the moon’s surface into which no light shines, and 
which show black on the silver face. No human joys 
wait to still conscience, which sits at the banquet like 
the skeleton that Egyptian feasters set at their tables. 
The old story told of a magician’s palace blazing with 
lighted windows, but there was always one dark;— 
what shrouded figure sat behind it? Is there not 
always a surly ‘elder brother’ who will not come in 
however the musicians may pipe and the servants 
dance? Appetite may be satisfied, but what of con- 
science, and reason, and the higher aspirations of the 
soul? The laughter that echoes through the soul is 
the hollower the louder it is, and reverberates most 
through empty spaces. 

But when Christ’s joy remains in us our joy will be 
full. Its flowing tide will rush into and placidly occupy 
all the else oozy shallows of our hearts, even into the 
narrowest crannies its penetrating waters will pass, and 
everywhere will bring a flashing surface that will 
reflect in our hearts the calm blue above. We need 
nothing else if we have Christ and His joy within us. 





190 THE PROVERBS [cH. XIV. 


If we have everything else, we need His joy within us, 
else ours will never be full. 

III. The heavenly joys are perpetual, the earthly joys 
transient. 

Many of our earthly joys die in the very act of being 
enjoyed. Those which depend on the gratification of 
some appetite expire in fruition, and at each recurrence 
are less and less complete. The influence of habit 
works in two ways to rob all such joys of their power 
to minister to us—it increases the appetite and de- 
creases the power of the object to satisfy. -Some are 
followed by swift revulsion and remorse; all soon 
become stale; some are followed by quick remorse; 
some are necessarily left behind as we go on in life. 
To the old man the pleasures of youth are but like 
children’s toys long since outgrown and left behind. 
All are at the mercy of externals. Those which we 
have not left we have to leave. The saddest lives are 
those of pleasure-seekers, and the saddest deaths are 
those of the men who sought for joy where it was not 
to be found, and sought for their gratification in a 
world which leaves them, and which they have to 
leave. 

There is a realm where abide ‘fullness of joy and ' 
pleasures for ever more.’ Surely they order their lives 
most wisely who look for their joys to nothing that 
earth holds, and have taken for their own the ancient 
vow: ‘Though the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither 
shall fruit be in the vine. . . . Yet I will rejoice in the 
Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. If ‘My 
joy’ abides in us in its calm and changeless depth, our 
joy will be ‘full’ whatever our circumstances may be; 
and we shall hear at last the welcome: ‘Enter thou 
into the joy of thy Lord.’ 


SATISFIED FROM SELF 


*, .. A good man shall be satisfied from himself.—PROVERBS xiv. 14, 


Ar first sight this saying strikes one as somewhat 
unlike the ordinary Scripture tone, and savouring 
rather of a Stoical self-complacency; but we recall 
parallel sayings, such as Christ’s words, ‘The water 
that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water’ ; 
and the Apostle’s, ‘Then shall he have rejoicing in 
himself alone. We further note that the text has an 
antithetic parallel in the preceding clause, where the 
picture is drawn of ‘a backslider in heart,’ as ‘filled 
with his own ways’; so that both clauses set forth the 
familiar but solemn thought that a man’s deeds react 
upon the doer, and apart from all thoughts of divine 
judgment, themselves bring certain retribution. To 
grasp the inwardness of this saying we must note that— 

I. Goodness comes from godliness. 

There is no more striking proof that most men are 
bad than the notion which they have of what is good. 
The word has been degraded to mean in common speech 
little more than amiability, and is applied with little 
discrimination to characters of which little more can 
be said than that they are facile and indulgent of evil. 
‘A good fellow’ may be a very bad man. At the 
highest the epithet connotes merely more or less 
admirable motives and more or less admirable deeds as 
their results, whilst often its use is no more than a 
piece of unmeaning politeness. That was what the 
young ruler meant by addressing Christ as ‘Good 
Master’; and Christ’s answer to him set him, and 
should set us, on asking ourselves why we call very 
ordinary men and very ordinary actions ‘good.’ The 

191 





192 THE PROVERBS [cH. XIV. 


scriptural notion is immensely deeper, and the serip- 
tural employment of the word is immensely more 
restricted. It is more inward: it means that motives 
should be right before it calls any action good; it 
means that our central and all-influencing motive 
should be love to God and regard to His will. That is 
the Old Testament point of view as wellas the New. Or 
to put it in other words, the ‘good man’ of the Bible is 
a man in whom outward righteousness flows from 
inward devotion and love to God. These two elements 
make up the character: godliness is an inseparable 
part of goodness, is the inseparable foundation of 
goodness, and the sole condition on which it is possible. 
But from this conception follows, that @ man may 
be truly called good, although not perfect. He may be 
so and yet have many failures. The direction of his 
aspirations, not the degree to which these are fulfilled, | 
determines his character, and his right to be reckoned 
a good man. Why was David called ‘a man after 
God’s own heart,’ notwithstanding his frightful fall? 
Was it not because that sin was contrary to the main 
direction of his life, and because he had struggled to 
his feet again, and with tears and self-abasement, yet 
with unconquerable desire and hope, ‘pressed toward 
the mark for the prize of his high calling’? David in 
the Old Testament and Peter in the New bid us be of 
good cheer, and warn us against the too common error 
of thinking that goodness means perfection. ‘The 
new moon with a ragged edge’ is even in its imperfec- 
tions beautiful, and in its thinnest circlet prophesies the 
perfect round. 

Remembering this inseparable connection between 
godliness and goodness we further note that— 

II. Godliness brings satisfaction. 


v. 14] SATISFIED FROM SELF 193° 


There is a grim contrast between the two halves of 
this verse. The former shows us the backslider in 
heart as filled ‘with his own ways. He gets weary 
with satiety; with his doings he ‘ will be sick of them’; 
and the things which at first delighted will finally 
disgust and be done without zest. There is nothing 
sadder than the gloomy faces often seen in the world’s 
festivals. But, on the other hand, the godly man will 
be satisfied from within. This is no Stoical proclama- 
tion of self-sufficingness. Self by itself satisfies no 
man, but self, become the abiding-place of God, does 
satisfy. A man alone is like ‘the chaff which the wind 
driveth away’; but, rooted in God, he is ‘like a tree 
planted by the rivers of water, whose leaf does not 
wither. He has found all that he needs. God is no 
longer without him but within; and he who can say, 
‘I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me,’ has within 
him the secret of peace and the source of satisfaction 
which can never say ‘I thirst.’ Such an inward self, 
in which God dwells and through which His sweet 
presence manifests itself in the renewed nature, sets 
man free from all dependence for blessedness on 
externals. We hang on them and are in despair if we 
lose them, because we have not the life of God within 
us. He who has such an indwelling, and he only, can 
truly say, ‘ All my possessions I carry with me. Take 
him and strip from him, film after film, possessions, 
reputation, friends; hack him limb from limb, and as 
long as there is body enough left to keep life in him, he 
can say, ‘I have all and abound. ‘Ye took joyfully 
the spoiling of your possessions, knowing that ye have 
your own selves for a better possession.’ 

III. Godly goodness brings inward satisfaction. 

No man is satisfied with himself until he has sub- 

N 





194 THE PROVERBS (oH. xv. 


jugated himself. What makes men restless and dis- 
contented is their tossing, anarchical desires. To live 
by impulse, or passion, or by anything but love to God, 
is to make ourselves our own tormentors. It is always 
true that he ‘ who loveth his life shall lose it,’ and loses 
it by the very act of loving it. Most men’s lives are 
like the troubled sea, ‘which cannot rest,’ and whose 
tossing surges, alas! ‘cast up mire and dirt, for their 
restless lives bring to the surface much that was meant 
to lie undisturbed in the depths. 

But he who has subdued himself is like some still 
lake which ‘heareth not the loud winds when they 
eall,’ and mirrors the silent heavens on its calm surface. 
But further, goodness brings satisfaction, because, as 
the Psalmist says, ‘in keeping Thy commandments 
there is great reward.’ There is a glow accompanying 
even partial obedience which diffuses itself with grate- 
ful warmth through the whole being of a man. And 
such goodness tends to the preservation of health of 
soul as natural, simple living to the health of the body. 
And that general sense of well-being brings with it a 
satisfaction compared with which all the feverish bliss 
of the voluptuary is poor indeed. 

But we must not forget that satisfaction from one’s 
self is not satisfaction with one’s self. There will 
always be the imperfection which will always prevent 
self-righteousness. The good man after the Bible 
pattern most deeply knows his faults, and in that very 
consciousness is there a deep joy. To be ever aspiring 
onwards, and to know that our aspiration is no vain 
dream, this is joy. Still to press ‘toward the mark,’ 
still to have ‘the yet untroubled world which gleams 
before us as we move, and to know that we shall attain 
if we follow on, this is the highest bliss. Not the 


v.14] WHAT GOD THINKS OF ME 195. 


accomplishment of our ideal, but the cherishing of it, 
is the true delight of life. 

Such self-satisfying goodness comes only through 
Christ. He makes it possible for us to love God and to 
trust Him. Only when we know ‘the love wherewith 
He has loved us,’ shall we love with a love which will 
be the motive power of our lives. He makes it pos- 
sible to live outward lives of obedience, which, imper- 
fect as it is, has ‘great reward.’ He makes it possible 
for us to attain the yet unattained, and to be sure that 
we ‘shall be like Him, for we shali see Him as He is.’ 
He has said, ‘The water that I shall give him shall be 
in him a well of water springing up unto everlasting 
life. Only when we can say, ‘I live, yet not I, but 
Christ liveth in me,’ will it be true of us in its fullest 
sense, ‘A good man shall be satisfied from himself.’ 


WHAT I THINK OF MYSELF AND WHAT 
GOD THINKS OF ME 


All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth the 
spirits. PROVERBS xvi. 2. 
‘ALL the ways of a man’—then there is no such thing 
as being conscious of having gone wrong, and having 
got into miry and foul ways? Of course there is; and 
equally of course a broad statement such as this of 
my text is not to be pressed into literal accuracy, but 
is a simple, general assertion of what we all know 
to be true, that we have a strange power of blinding 
ourselves as to what is wrong in ourselves and in 
our actions. Part of the cure for that lies in the 
thought in the second clause of the text—‘ But the 
word weigheth the spirits. He weighs them in a 





196 THE PROVERBS (CH. XVI. 


balance, or as a man might take up something and 
poise it on his palm, moving his hand up and down 
till his muscles by their resistance gave him some 
inkling of its weight. But what is it that God weighs? 
‘The spirits. We too often content ourselves with 
looking at our ways; God looks at ourselves. He 
takes the inner man into account, estimates actions 
by motives, and so very often differs from our judg- 
ment of ourselves and of one another. 

Now so far the verse of my text carries me, and 
as a rule we have to keep ourselves within the limits 
of each verse in reading this Book of Proverbs, for two 
adjoining verses have very seldom anything to do with 
each other. But in the present case they have, for here 
is what follows: ‘Commit thy works unto the Lord, 
and thy thoughts’ (about thyself and everything else) 
‘shall be established.’ That is to say, since we make 
such terrible blunders about the moral character of 
our own works, and since side by side with these 
erroneous estimates there is God’s absolutely correct 
and all-penetrating one, common sense says: ‘Put 
yourself into His hands, and then it will be all right.’ 
So we consider now these very well-worn and familiar 
thoughts as to our strange blunders about ourselves, 
as to the contemporaneous divine estimate, which is 
absolutely correct, and as to the practical issues that 
come from two facts. 

I. Our strange power of blinding ourselves. 

It is difficult to make so threadbare a commonplace 
at allimpressive. But yet if we would only take this 
thought, ‘All the ways of a man’—that is me—‘are 
right in his own eyes’—that is, my eyes—and apply 
it directly to our own personal experience and thoughts 
of ourselves, we should find that, like every other 


v. 2] WHAT GOD THINKS OF ME 197 


commonplace of morality and religion, the apparently 
toothless generality has sharp enough teeth, and that 
the trite truth flashes up into strange beauty, and 
has power to purify and guide our lives. Some one 
says that ‘recognised truths lie bedridden in the dor- 
mitory of the soul, side by side with exploded errors.’ 
And I am afraid that that is true of this thought, that 
we cannot truly estimate ourselves. 

‘All the ways of a man are right in his own eyes.’ 
For to begin with, we all know that there is nothing 
that we so habitually neglect as the bringing of con- 
science to bear right through all our lives. Sometimes 
it is because there is a temptation that appeals very 
strongly, perhaps to sense, perhaps to some strong 
inclination which has been strengthened by indulgence. 
And when the craving arises, that is no time to begin 
asking, ‘Is it right, or is it wrong to yield?’ That 
question stands small chance of being wisely con- 
sidered at a moment when, under the goading of 
roused desire, a man is like a mad bull when it charges, 
It drops its head and shuts its eyes, and goes right 
forward, and no matter whether it smashes its horns 
against an iron gate, and damages them and itself, 
or not, on it will go. So when great temptations rise— 
and we all know such times in our lives—we are in 
no condition to discuss that question with ourselves. 
Sometimes the craving is so vehement that if we could 
not get this thing that we want without putting our 
hands through the sulphurous smoke of the bottomless 
pit, we should thrust them out to grasp it. But in 
regard to the smaller commonplace matters of daily 
life, too, we all know that there are whole regions of 
our lives which seem to us to be so small that it is 
hardly worth while summoning the august thought 





198 THE PROVERBS [cH. XVI. 


of ‘right or wrong?’ to decide them. Yes, and a 
thousand smugglers that go across a frontier, each 
with a little package of contraband goods that does 
not pay any duty, make a large aggregate at the 
year’s end. It is the trifles of life that shape life, 
and it is to them that we so frequently fail in applying, 
honestly and rigidly, the test, ‘Is this right or wrong?’ 
‘He that is faithful in that which is least, and con- 
scientious down to the smallest things, ‘is faithful also 
in much. The legal maxim has it, ‘The law does not 
care about the very smallest matters. What that 
precisely means, as a legal maxim, I do not profess 
to know, but it is rank heresy in regard to conduct 
and morality. Look after the pennies, and the pounds 
will look after themselves. Get the habit of bringing 
conscience to bear on little things, or you will never 
be able to bring it to bear when great temptations 
come and the crises emerge in your lives. Thus, by 
reason of that deficiency in the habitual application 
of conscience to our lives, we slide through, and take 
for granted that all our ways are right in our eyes. 
Then there is another thing: we not only neglect 
the rigid application of conscience to all our lives, but 
we have a double standard, and the notion of right 
and wrong which we apply to our neighbours is very 
different from that which we apply to ourselves. No 
wonder that the criminal is acquitted, and goes away 
from the tribunal ‘without a stain on his character,’ 
when he is his own judge and jury. ‘All the ways 
of a man are right in his own eyes,’ but the very same 
‘ways’ that you allow to pass muster and condone in 
yourselves, you visit with sharp and unfailing censure 
in others. That strange self-complacency which we 
have, which is perfectly undisturbed by the most 


v. 2] WHAT GOD THINKS OF ME _ 199 


general confessions of sinfulness, and only shies when 
it is brought up to particular details of faults, we all 
know is very deep in ourselves. 

Then there is another thing to be remembered, and 
that is—the enormous and the tragical influence of 
habit in dulling the mirror of our souls, on which our 
deeds are reflected in their true image. There are 
places in Europe where the peasantry have become 
so accustomed to minute and constantly repeated doses 
of arsenic that it is actually a minister of health to 
them, and what would poison you is food for them. 
We all know that we may sit in a hall like this, 
packed full and steaming, while the condensed breath 
is running down the windows, and never be aware 
of the foulness of the odours and the air. But when 
we go out and feel the sweet, pure breath of the un- 
polluted atmosphere, then we know how habit has 
dulled the lungs. And so habit dulls the conscience. 
According to the old saying, the man that began by 
carrying a calf can carry an ox at the end, and feel 
no burden. What we are accustomed to do we scarcely 
ever recognise to be wrong, and it is these things 
which pass because they are habitual that do more to 
wreck lives than occasional outbursts of far worse 
evils, according to the world’s estimate of them. Habit 
dulls the eye. 

Yes; and more than that, the: conscience needs 
educating just as much as any other faculty. A man 
says, ‘My conscience acquits me’; then the question 
is, ‘And what sort of a conscience have you got, if it 
acquits you?’ All that your conscience says is, ‘It is 
right to do what is right, it is wrong to do what is 
wrong. But for the explanation of what is wrong 
and what is right you have to go somewhere else 





200 THE PROVERBS (cH. XVI. 


than to your consciences. You have to go to your 
reason, and your judgment, and your common sense, 
and a hundred other sources. And then, when you 
have found out what is right and what is wrong, you 
will hear the voice saying, ‘Do that, and do not do 
this.’ Every one of us has faults that we know nothing 
about, and that we bring up to the tribunal of our 
consciences, and wipe our mouths and say, ‘We have 
done no harm.’ ‘I thought within myself that I verily 
ought to do many things contrary to the name of 
Jesus of Nazareth. ‘They think that they do God 
service. Many things that seem to us virtues are 
vices. 

And as for the individual so for the community. 
The perception of what is right and what is wrong 
needs long educating. When I was a boy the whole 
Christian Church of America, with one voice, declared 
that ‘slavery was a patriarchal institution appointed 
by God.’ The Christian Church of to-day has not 
awakened either to the sin of war or of drink. And 
I have not the smallest doubt that there are hosts 
of things which public opinion, and Christian public 
opinion, regards to-day as perfectly allowable and 
innocent, and, perhaps, even praiseworthy, and over 
which it will ask God’s blessing, at which, in a hundred 
years our descendants will hold up their hands in 
wonder, and say, ‘How did good people—and good 
people they no doubt were—tolerate such a condition 
of things fora moment?’ ‘All a man’s ways are right 
in his own eyes,’ and he needs a great deal of teaching 
before he comes to understand what, according to 
God’s will, really is right and what is wrong. 

Now let me turn for a moment to the contrasted 
picture, with which I can only deal ina sentence or two. 





v. 2] WHAT GOD THINKS OF ME 201, 


II. The divine estimate. 

Ihave already pointed out the two emphatic thoughts 
that lie in that clause, ‘God weigheth,’ and ‘weigheth 
the spirits.’ I need not repeat what I said, in the 
introduction to these remarks, upon this subject. Just 
let us take with us these two thoughts, that the same 
actions which we sometimes test, in our very defective 
and loaded balances, have also to go into the infallible 
scales, and that the actions go with their interpretation 
in their motive. ‘God weighs the spirits. He reads 
what we do by His knowledge of what we are. We 
reveal to one another what we are by what we do, 
and, as is a commonplace, none of us can penetrate, 
except very superficially and often inaccurately, to the 
motives that actuate. But the motive is three-fourths 
of the action. God does not go from without, as it 
were, inwards; from our actions to estimate our char- 
acters; but He starts with the character and the 
motive—the habitual character and the occasional 
motive—and by these He reads the deed. He weighs, 
ponders, penetrates to the heart of the thing, and He 
weighs the spirits. 

So on the one hand, ‘I obtained mercy, because I 
did it ignorantly in unbelief, and many a deed which 
the world would condemn, and in which we onlookers 
would see evil, God does not wholly condemn, because 
He, being the Inlooker as well as the Onlooker, sees 
the albeit mistaken yet pure motives that underlay 
it. So it is conceivable that the inquisitor, and the 
heretic that he sent to the stake, may stand side by 
side in God’s estimate; the one if he were actuated 
by pure zeal for the truth, the other because he was 
actuated by self-sacrifice in loyalty to his Lord. And, 
on the other hand, many a deed that goes flaunting 





202 THE PROVERBS (CH. XVI. 


through the world in ‘purple and fine linen’ will be 
stripped of its gauds, and stand naked and ugly before 

the eyes of ‘Him with whom we have to do. He 
‘ weighs the spirits.’ 

Lastly, a word about— 

III. The practical issues of these though 

‘Commit thy works unto the Lord’—that is to say, 
do not be too sure that you are right because you do 
not think you are wrong. We should be very dis- 
trustful of our own judgments of ourselves, especially 
when that judgment permits us to do certain things. 
‘I know nothing against myself, said the Apostle, 
‘yet am I not hereby justified.’ And again, still more 
emphatically, he lays down the principle that I would 
have liked to have enlarged upon if I had had time. 
‘Happy is he that condemneth not himself in the things 
which he alloweth. You may have made the glove 
too easy by stretching. It is possible that you may 
think that something is permissible and right which 
a wiser and more rigid and Christlike judgment of 
yourself would have taught you was wrong. Look 
under the stones for the reptiles, and remember the 
prayer, ‘Cleanse thou me from secret faults, and 
distrust a permitting and easy conscience. 

Then, again, let us seek the divine strengthening 
and illumination. We have to seek that in some very 
plain ways. Seek it by prayer. There is nothing so 
powerful in stripping off from our besetting sins their 
disguises and masks as to go to God with the honest 
petition: ‘Search me... and try me... and see if 
there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the 
way everlasting. Brethren! if we will do that, we 
shall get answers that will startle us, that will humble 
us, but that: will be blessed beyond all other blessedness, 


v2] WHAT GOD THINKS OF ME 203 


and will bring to light the ‘hidden things of darkness.’ 
Then, after they are brought to light and cast out, 
‘then shall every man have praise of God.’ 

We ought to keep ourselves in very close union with 
Jesus Christ, because if we cling to Him in simple 
faith, He will come into our hearts, and we shall be 
saved from walking in darkness, and have the light 
of life shining down upon our deeds. Christ is the 
conscience of the Christian man’s conscience, who, by 
His voice in the hearts that wait upon Him, says, ‘Do 
this, and they do it. It is when He is in our spirits 
that our estimate of ourselves is set right, and that 
we hear the voice saying, ‘This is the way, walk ye 
in it’; and not merely do we hear the voice, but we 
get help to our feet in running in the way of His 
commandments, with enlarged and confirmed hearts. 
Brethren! for the discovery of our faults, which we 
ought all to long for, and for the conquest of these 
discovered faults, which, if we are Christians, we do 
long for, our confidence is in Him. And if you trust 
Him, ‘the blood of Christ will cleanse’—because it 
comes into our life’s blood—‘ from all sin.’ 

And the last thing that I would say is this. We must 
punctiliously obey every dictate that speaks in our 
own consciences, especially when it urges us to un- 
welcome duties or restrains us from too welcome sins. 
‘To him that hath shall be given’—and the sure way 
to condemn ourselves to utter blindness as to our true 
selves is to pay no attention to the glimmers of light 
that we have, whilst, on the other hand, the sure way 
to be led into fuller illumination is to follow faith- 
fully whatsoever sparkles of light may shine upon our 
hearts. ‘Do the duty that lies nearest thee.’ Put thy 
trust in Jesus Christ. Distrust thine own approbation 





204 THE PROVERBS (CH. XVI. 


or condonation of thine actions, and ever turn to Him 
and say, ‘Show me what to do, and make me willing 
and fit to do it.’ Then there will be little contrariety 
between your estimate of your ways and God's judg- 
ments of your spirits. 


A BUNDLE OF PROVERBS 


‘Understanding is a wellspring of life unto him that hath it: but the instruction 
of fools is folly. 23. The heart of the wise teacheth his mouth, and addeth learning 
to hislips. 24, Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul,and health 
to the bones. 25. There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end 
thereof are the ways of death. 26. He that laboureth laboureth for himself; for 
his mouth craveth it of him. 27. An ungodly man diggeth up evil: and in his lips 
there is as a burning fire. 28. A froward man soweth strife: and a whisperer 
separateth chief friends. 29. A violent man enticeth his neighbour, and leadeth 
him into }the way that is not good. 30. He shutteth his eyes to devise froward 
things: moving his lips he bringeth evil to pass. 31. The hoary head is a crown of 
glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness. 32. He that is slow to anger is 
better than the mighty ; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. 
33. The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord. — 
PROVERBS Xvi. 22-33. 


A sLicHT thread of connection may be traced in some of 
the proverbs in this passage. Verse 22, with its praise 
of ‘Wisdom,’ introduces one instance of Wisdom’s ex- 
cellence in verse 23, and that again, with its reference 
to speech, leads on to verse 24 and its commendation 
of ‘pleasant words. Similarly, verses 27-30 give four 
pictures of vice, three of them beginning with ‘a man.’ 
We may note, too, that, starting with verse 26, every 
verse till verse 30 refers to some work of ‘the mouth’ 
or ‘ lips.’ 

The passage begins with one phase of the contrast 
between Wisdom and Folly, which this book is never 
weary of emphasising and underscoring. We shall 
miss the force of its most characteristic teaching unless 
we keep well in mind that the two opposites of Wisdom 
and Folly do not refer only or chiefly to intellectual 
distinctions. The very basis of ‘Wisdom,’ as this book 





vs. 22-33] A BUNDLE OF PROVERBS 205 . 


conceives it, is the ‘fear of the Lord, without which 
the man of biggest, clearest brain, and most richly 
stored mind, is, in its judgment, ‘a fool.’ Such ‘under- 
standing,’ which apprehends and rightly deals with the 
deepest fact of life, our relation to God and to His law, 
is a ‘well-spring of life. The figure speaks still more 
eloquently to Easterns than to us. In those hot lands 
the cool spring, bursting through the baked rocks or 
burning sand, makes the difference between barrenness 
and fertility, the death of all green things and life. So 
where true Wisdom is deep in a heart, it will come 
flashing up into sunshine, and will quicken the seeds of 
all good as it flows through the deeds. ‘Everything 
liveth whithersoever the river cometh.’ Productiveness, 
refreshment, the beauty of the sparkling wavelets, the 
music of their ripples against the stones, and all the 
other blessings and delights of a perpetual fountain, 
have better things corresponding to them in the life 
of the man who is wise with the true Wisdom which 
begins with the fear of God. Just as 7¢ is active in the 
life, so is Folly. But its activity is not blessing and 
gladdening, but punitive. For all sin automatically 
works its own chastisement, and the curse of Folly is 
that, while it corrects, it prevents the ‘fool’ from 
profiting by the correction. Since it punishes itself, 
one might expect that it would cure itself, but experi- 
ence shows that, while it wields a rod, its subjects 
‘receive no correction. That insensibility is the 
paradox and the Nemesis of ‘ Folly.’ 

The Old Testament ethics are remarkable for their 
solemn sense of the importance of words, and Proverbs 
shares in that sense to the full. In some aspects, 
speech is a more perfect self-revelation than act. So 
the outflow of the fountain in words comes next. Wise 





206 THE PROVERBS [CH. XVI. 


heart makes wise speech. That may be looked at in 
two ways. It may point to the utterance by word as 
the most precious, and incumbent on its possessor, of 
all the ways of manifesting Wisdom; or it may point 
to the only source of real ‘learning,—namely, a wise 
heart. In the former view, it teaches us our solemn 
obligation not to hide our light under a bushel, but to 
speak boldly and lovingly all the truth which God has 
taught us. A dumb Christian is a monstrosity. We 
are bound to give voice to our ‘Wisdom.’ In the other — 
aspect, it reminds us that there is a better way of 
getting Wisdom than by many books,—namely, by 
filling our hearts, through communion with God, with 
His own will. Then, whether we have worldly ‘learn- 
ing’ or no, we shall be able to instruct many, and lead 
them to the light which has shone on us. 

There are many kinds of pleasant words, some of 
which are not like ‘honey,’ but like poison hid in jam. 
Insincere compliments, flatteries when rebukes would 
be fitting, and all the brood of civil conventionalities, 
are not the words meant here. Truly pleasant ones 
are those which come from true Wisdom, and may 
often have a surface of bitterness like the prophet’s 
roll, but have a core of sweetness. It is a great thing 
to be able to speak necessary and unwelcome truths 
with lips into which grace is poured. A spoonful of 
honey catches more flies than a hogshead of vinegar. 

Verse 25 has no connection with its context. It 
teaches two solemn truths, according to the possible 
double meaning of ‘right. If that word means ethi- 
cally right, then the saying sets forth the terrible 
possibility of conscience being wrongly instructed, and 
sanctioning gross sin. If it means only straight, or _ 
level—that is, successful and easy—the saying enforces 


vs. 22-33) A BUNDLE OF PROVERBS — 207 | 


the not less solemn truth that sin deceives as to its 
results, and that the path of wrong-doing, which is 
flowery and smooth at first, grows rapidly thorny, and 
goes fast downhill, and ends at last in a cul-de-sac, of 
which death is the only outlet.” We are not to trust 
our own consciences, except as enlightened by God’s 
Word. We are not to listen to sin’s lies, but to fix it 
well in our minds that there is only one way which 
leads to life and peace, the narrow way of faith and 
obedience. 

The Revised Version’s rendering of verse 26 gives the 
right idea. ‘The appetite, or hunger, ‘of the labourer 
labours for him’ (that is, the need of food is the main- 
spring of work), and it lightens the work to which it 
‘impels. So hunger isablessing. That is true in regard 
to the body. The manifold material industries of men 
are, at bottom, prompted by the need to earn something 
to eat. The craving which drives to such results is a 
thing to be thankful for. It is better to live where toil 
is needful to sustain life than in lazy lands where an 
hour’s work will provide food for a week. But the 
saying reaches to spiritual desires, and anticipates 
the beatitude on those who ‘hunger and thirst after 
righteousness. Happy they who feel that craving, and 
are driven by it to the labour for the bread which comes 
down from heaven! ‘This is the work of God, that ye 
believe on Him whom He hath sent.’ 

The next. three proverbs (vs. 27-29) give three pictures 
of different types of bad men. First, we have ‘the 
worthless man’ (Rev. Ver.), literally ‘a man of Belial, 
which last word probably means worthlessness. His 
work is ‘digging evil’; his words are like scorching 
fire. To dig evil seems to have a wider sense than has 
digging a pit for others (Ps. vii. 15), which is usually 





208 THE PROVERBS [CH. XVI. 


taken as a parallel. The man is not merely malicious 
toward others, but his whole activity goes to further 
evil. It is the material in which he delights to work. 
What mistaken spade husbandry it is to spend labour 
on such a soil! What can it grow but thistles and 
poisonous plants? His words are as bad as his deeds. 
No honey drops from his lips, but scorching fire, which 
burns up not only reputations but tries to consume all 
that is good. As James says, such a tongue is ‘set on 
fire of hell.’ The picture is that of a man bad through 
and through. But there may be indefinitely close 
approximations to it, and no man can say, ‘Thus far 
will I go in evil ways, and no further.’ 

The second orn is of a more specific ane The 
‘froward man’ here seems to be the same as the 
slanderer in the next clause. He utters perverse things, 
and so soweth strife and parts friends. There are 
people whose mouths are as full of malicious whispers 
as a sower’s basket is of seed, and who have a base 
delight in flinging them broadcast. Sometimes they 
do not think of what the harvest will be, but often 
they chuckle to see it springing in the mistrust and 
alienation of former friends. A loose tongue often 
does as much harm as a bitter one, and delight in 
dwelling on people’s faults is not innocent because the 
tattler did not think of the mischief he was setting 
agoing. 

In verse 29 another type of evil-doer is outlined 
—the opposite, in some respects, of the preceding. The 
slanderer works secretly ; this mischief-maker goes the 
plain way to work. He uses physical force or ‘ violence.’ 
But how does that fit in with ‘enticeth’? It may be that 
the enticement of his victim into a place suitable for 
robbing or murder is meant, but more probably there 


vs. 22-33] A BUNDLE OF PROVERBS 209 . 


is here the same combination of force and craft as in 
chapter i. 10-14. Criminals have a wicked delight in 
tempting innocent people to join their gangs. A law- 
less desperado is a hotbed of infection. 

Verse 30 draws a portrait of a bad man. It is a bit 
of homely physiognomical observation. A man witha 
trick of closing his eyes has something working in his 
head; and, if he is one of these types of men, one may 
be sure that he is brewing mischief. Compressed lips 
mean concentrated effort, or fixed resolve, or suppressed 
feeling, and in any of these cases are as a danger 
signal, warning that the man is at work on some evil 
deed. 

Two sayings follow, which contrast goodness with 
the evils just described. The ‘if’ in verse 31 weakens 
the strong assertion of the proverb. ‘The hoary 
head is a crown of glory; it is found in the way of 
righteousness. That is but putting into picturesque 
form the Old Testament promise of long life to the 
righteous—a promise which is not repeated in the new 
dispensation, but which is still often realised. ‘Whom 
the gods love, die young, is a heathen proverb; but 
there is a natural tendency in the manner of life 
which Christianity produces*to prolong a man’s days. 
A heart at peace, because stayed on God, passions held 
well in hand, an avoidance of excesses which eat away 
strength, do tend to length of life, and the opposites of 
these do tend to shorten it. How many young men go 
home from our great cities every year, with their 
‘bones full of the iniquities of their youth,’ to die! 

If we are to tread the way of righteousness, and so 
come to ‘reverence and the silver hair, we must govern 
ourselves. So the next proverb extols the ruler of his 
own spirit as ‘more than conquerors, whose triumphs 

oO 





210 THE PROVERBS [CH. XVIII. 


are won in such vulgar fields as battles and sieges. 
Our sorest fights and our noblest victories are within. 


‘Unless above himself he can 
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!’ 


Verse 31 takes the casting of the lot as one instance 
of the limitation of all human effort, in all which we 
can but use the appropriate means, while the whole 
issue must be left in God’s hands, The Jewish law did 
not enjoin the lot, but its use seems to have been 
frequent. The proverb presents in the sharpest relief 
a principle which is true of all our activity. The old 
proverb-maker knew nothing of chance. To him there 
were but two real moving forces in the world—man 
and God. To the one belonged sowing the seed, doing 
his part, whether casting the lot or toiling at his task. 
His force was real, but derived and limited. Efforts 
and attempts are ours; results are God's. Wesow; He 
‘gives it a body as it pleases Him.’ Nothing happens 
by accident. Man’s little province is bounded on all 
sides by God’s, and the two touch. There is no neutral 
territory between, where godless chance rules. 


TWO FORTRESSES 


‘The name of the Lord is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is 
safe. 11. The rich man’s wealth is his strong city, and as an high wall in hisown 
conceit.’—PROVERBS xviii. 10, 11. 


THE mere reading of these two verses shows that, 
contrary to the usual rule in the Book of Proverbs, 
they have a bearing on each other. They are intended 
to suggest a very strong contrast, and that contrast is 
even more emphatic in the original than in our transla- 
tion; because, as the margin of your Bibles will tell 


vs. 10,11] TWO FORTRESSES 211) 


you, the last word of the former verse might be more 
correctly rendered, ‘the righteous runneth into it, and 
is set on high.’ It is the same word which is employed 
in the next verse—‘a high wall.’ 

So we have ‘ the strong tower’ and ‘the strong city’; 
the man lifted up above danger on the battlements of 
the one, and the man fancying himself to be high above 
it (and only fancying himself) in the imaginary safety 
of the other. 

I. Consider then, first, the two fortresses. 

One need only name them side by side to feel the full 
force of the intended contrast. On the one hand, the 
name of the Lord with all its depths and glories, with 
its blaze of lustrous purity, and infinitudes of inex- 
haustible power; and on the other, ‘the rich man’s 
wealth. What contempt is expressed in putting the 
two side by side! It is as if the author had said, ‘ Look 
on this picture and on that!’ Two fortresses! Yes! 
The one is like Gibraltar, inexpugnable on its rock, and 
the other is like a painted castle on the stage; flimsy 
canvas that you could put your foot through—solidity 
by the side of nothingness. For even the poor appear- 
ance of solidity is an illusion, as our text says with 
bitter emphasis—‘a high wall in his own conceit.’ 

‘The name of the Lord,’ of course, is the Biblical 
expression for the whole character of God, as He has 
made it known to us, or in other words, for God Him- 
self, as He has been pleased to reveal Himself to man- 
kind. The syllables of that name are all the deeds by 
which He has taught us what He is; every act of 
power, of wisdom, of tenderness, of grace that has 
manifested these qualities and led us to believe that 
they are all infinite. In the name, in its narrower 
sense, the name of Jehovah, there is much of ‘the name’ 





212 THE PROVERBS [cH. XVIII. 


in its wider sense. For that name ‘Jehovah,’ both by 
its signification and by the circumstances under which 
it was originally employed, tells us a great deal about 
God. It tells us, for instance, by virtue of its significa- 
tion, that He is self-existent, depending upon no other 
creature. ‘I AMTHATI Am!’ No other being can say 
that. All the rest of us have to say, ‘I am that which 
God made me.’ Circumstances and a hundred other 
things have made me; God finds the law of His being 
and the fountain of His being within Himself. 


‘He sits on no precarious throne, 
Nor borrows leave to be.’ 


His name proclaims Him to be self-existent, and as 
self-existent, eternal; and as eternal, changeless; and 
as self-existent, eternal, changeless, infinite in all the 
qualities by which He makes Himself known. This 
boundless Being, all full of wisdom, power, and tender- 
ness, with whom we can enter into relations of amity 
and concord, surely He is ‘a strong tower into which 
we may run and be safe.’ 

But far beyond even the sweep of that great name, 
Jehovah, is the knowledge of God’s deepest heart and 
character which we learn in Him who said, ‘I have 
declared Thy name unto My brethren, and will declare 
it. Christ in His life and death, in His meekness, 
sweetness, gentleness, calm wisdom, infinite patience, 
attractiveness; yearning over sinful hearts, weeping 
over rebels, in the graciousness of His life, in the 
sacredness and the power of His Cross, is the Revealer 
to our hearts of the heart of God. If I may so say, He 
has builded ‘the strong tower’ broader, has expanded 
its area and widened its gate, and lifted its summit yet 
nearer the heavens, and made the name of God a wider 


vs, 10, 11] TWO FORTRESSES 213 . 


name and amightier name, and a name of surer defence 
and blessing than ever it was before. 

And so, dear brethren! it all comes to this, the name 
that is ‘the strong tower’ is the name ‘My Father!’ a 
Father of infinite tenderness and wisdom and power. 
Oh! where can the child rest more quietly than on the 
mother’s breast, where can the child be safer than in 
the circle of the father’s arms? ‘The name of the Lord 
is a strong tower.’ 

Now turn to the other for a moment: ‘The rich 
man’s wealth is’ (with great emphasis on the next little 
word) ‘his strong city, and as a high wall in his own 
conceit.’ Of course we have not to deal here only with 
wealth in the shape of money, but all external and 
material goods, the whole mass of the ‘things seen and 
temporal,’ aré gathered together here in this phrase. 
Men use their imaginations in very strange fashion, 
and make, or fancy they make, for themselves out of 
the things of the present life a defence and a strength. 
Like some poor lunatic, out upon a moor, that fancies 
himself ensconced in a castle; like some barbarous 
tribes behind their stockades or crowding at the back 
of a little turf wall, or in some old tumble-down fort 
that the first shot will bring rattling down about their 
ears, fancying themselves perfectly secure and defended 
—so do men deal with these outward things that are 
given them for another purpose altogether: they make 
of them defences and fortresses. 

It is difficult for a man to have them and not to trust 
them. So Jesus said to His disciples once: ‘ How 
hardly shall they that have riches enter into the 
Kingdom’; and when they were astonished at His 
words, He repeated them with the significant variation, 
‘How hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter 





214 THE PROVERBS [cH. XVUII. 


into the Kingdom of God.’ So He would teach that 
the misuse and not the possession of wealth is the 
barrier, but so, too, He would warn us that, nine times 
out of ten, the possession of them in more than a 
very modest measure, tempts a man into confidence 
in them. 

The illusion is one that besets us all. We are all 
tempted to make a defence of the things that we can 
see and handle. Is it not strange, and is it not sad, 
that most of us just turn the truth round about and 
suppose ‘that the real defence is the imaginary, and 
that the imaginary one is the real? How many men 
are there in this chapel who, if they spoke out of their 
deepest convictions, would say: ‘Oh yes! the promises 
of God are all very well, but I would rather have the 
cash down. I suppose that I may trust that He will 
provide bread and water, and all the things that I need, 
but I would rather have a good solid balance at the 
banker's. How many of you would rather honestly, 
and at the bottom of your hearts, have that than God’s 
word for your defence? How many of you think that 
to trust in a living God is but grasping at a very airy 
and unsubstantial kind of support; and that the real 
solid defence is the defence made of the things that you 
can see? 

My brother! it is exactly the opposite way. Turn it 
clean round, and you get the truth. The unsubstantial 
shadows are the material things that you can see and 
handle; illusory as a dream, and as little able to ward 
off the blows of fate as a soap bubble. The real is the 
unseen beyond—‘ the things that are, and He who alone 
really is, and in His boundless and absolute Being is 
our only defence. 

In one aspect or another, that false imagination with 


vs. 10,11] TWO FORTRESSES 215 


which my last text deals is the besetting sin of 
Manchester. Not the rich man only, but the poor man 
just as much, is in danger of it. The poor man who 
thinks that everything would be right if only he were 
rich, and the rich man who thinks that everything is 
right because he is rich, are exactly the same man. 
The circumstances differ, but the one man is but the 
other turned inside out. And all round about us we 
see the fierce fight to get more and more of these 
things, the tight grip of them when we have got them, 
the overestimate of the value of them, the contempt 
for the people who have less of them than ourselves. 
Our aristocracy is an aristocracy of wealth; in some 
respects, one by no means to be despised, because there 
often go a great many good qualities to the making 
and the stewardship of wealth; but still it is an evil 
that men should be so largely estimated by their money 
as they are here. It is not a sound state of opinion 
which has made ‘ what is he worth?’ mean ‘how much 
of zt has he?’ We are taught here to look upon the 
prizes of life as being mainly wealth. To win that is 
‘success —‘ prosperity ’—and it is very hard for us all 
not to be influenced by the prevailing tone. 

I would urge you, young men, especially to lay this 
to heart—that of all delusions that can beset you in 
your course, none will work more disastrously than the 
notion that the summum bonum, the shield and stay of 
a man, is the ‘abundance of the things that he possesses.’ 
I fancy I see more listless, discontented, unhappy faces 
looking out of carriages than I see upon the pavement. 
And I am sure of this, at any rate, that all which is 
noble and sweet and good in life can be wrought out 
and possessed upon as much bread and water as will 
keep body and soul together, and as much furniture as 





216 THE PROVERBS _[cx. xvm1. 


will enable a man to sit at his meal and lie down at 
night. And as for the rest, it has many advantages 
and blessings, but oh! it is all illusory as a defence 
against the evils that will come, sooner or later, to 
every life. 

II. Consider next how to get into the true Refuge. 

‘The righteous runneth into it and is safe,’ says my 
text. You may get into the illusory one very easily. 
Imagination will take you there. There is no difficulty 
at all about that. And yet the way by which a man 
makes this world his defence may teach you a lesson as 
to how you can make God your defence. How doesa 
man make this world his defence? By trusting to it. 
He that says to the fine gold, ‘Thou art my confidence,’ 
has made it his fortress—and that is how you will 
make God your fortress—by trusting to Him. The 
very same emotion, the very same act of mind, heart, 
and will, may be turned either upwards or downwards, 
as you can turn the beam from a lantern which way 
you please. Direct it earthwards, and you ‘trust in the 
uncertainty of riches.’ Flash it heavenwards, and you 
‘trust in the living God.’ 

And that same lesson is taught by the words of our 
text, ‘The righteous runneth into it. I do not dwell 
upon the word ‘righteous.’ That is the Old Testament 
point of view, which could not conceive it possible that 
any man could have deep and close communion with 
God, except on condition of a pure character. I will 
not speak of that at present, but point to the pictur- 
esque metaphor, which will tell us a great deal more 
about what faith is than many a philosophical disserta- 
tion. Many a man who would be perplexed by a 
theologian’s talk will understand this: ‘The righteous 
runneth into the name of the Lord.’ 


vs. 10, 11] TWO FORTRESSES 217 


The metaphor brings out the idea of eager haste in 
betaking oneself to the shelter, as when an invading 
army comes into a country, and the unarmed peasants 
take their portable belongings and their cattle, and 
catch up their children in their arms, and set their 
wives upon their mules, and make all haste to some 
fortified place; or as when the manslayer in Israel fled 
to the city of refuge, or as when Lot hurried for his life 
out of Sodom. There would be no dawdling then; but 
with every muscle strained, men would run into the 
stronghold, counting every minute a year till they 
were inside its walls, and heard the heavy door close 
between them and the pursuer. No matter how rough 
the road, or how overpowering the heat—no time to 
stop to gather flowers, or even diamonds on the road, 
when a moment's delay might mean the enemy’s sword 
in your heart! 

Now that metaphor is frequently used to express the 
resolved and swift act by which, recognising in Jesus 
Christ, who declares the name of the Lord, our hiding- 
place, we shelter ourselves in Him, and rest secure. 
One of the picturesque words by which the Old 
Testament expresses ‘trust’ means literally ‘to flee to 
a refuge. The Old Testament trust is the New 
Testament faith, even as the Old Testament ‘Name of 
the Lord’ answers to the New Testament ‘Name of 
Jesus. And so we run into this sure hiding-place and 
strong fortress of the name of the Lord, when we 
betake ourselves to Jesus and put our trust in Him as 
our defence. 

Such a faith—the trust of mind, heart, and will— 
laying hold of the name of the Lord, makes us ‘ right- 
eous, and so capable of ‘dwelling with the devouring 
fire’ of God’s perfect purity. The Old Testament point 


ee ie 





218 THE PROVERBS (CH. XVI. 


of view was righteousness, in order to abiding in God. 
The New Testament begins, as it were, at an earlier 
stage in the religious life, and tells us how to get the 
righteousness, without which, it holds as strongly as 
the Old Testament, ‘no man shall see the Lord. It 
shows us that our faith, by which we run into that 
fortress, fits us to enter the fortress, because it makes 
us partakers of Christ’s purity. 

So my earnest question to you all is—Have you ‘fled 
for refuge to lay hold’ on that Saviour in whom God 
has set His name? Like Lot out of Sodom, like the 
manslayer to the city of refuge, like the unwarlike 
peasants to the baron’s tower, before the border 
thieves, have you gone thither for shelter from all the 
sorrows and guilt and dangers that are marching 
terrible against you? Can you take up as yours the 
old grand words of exuberant trust in which the 
Psalmist heaps together the names of the Lord, as if 
walking about the city of his defence, and telling the 
towers thereof, ‘The Lord is my rock, and my 
fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in 
whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my 
salvation, and my high tower’? If you have, then 
‘because you have made the Lord your refuge, there 
shall no evil befall you.’ 

III. So we have, lastly, what comes of sheltering in 
these two refuges. 

As to the former of them, I said at the beginning of 
these remarks that the words ‘is safe’ were more 
accurately as well as picturesquely rendered by ‘is set 
aloft.’ They remind us of the psalm which has many 
points of resemblance with this text, and which gives 
the very same thought when it says, ‘I will set him on 
high, because he hath known My name.’ The fugitive 


vs. 10,11] TWO FORTRESSES 219 


is taken within the safe walls of the strong tower, and 
is set up high on the battlements, looking down 
upon the baffled pursuers, and far beyond the reach of 
their arrows. To stand upon that tower lifts a man 
above the region where temptations fly, above the 
region where sorrow strikes; lifts him above sin and 
guilt and condemnation and fear, and calumny and 
slander, and sickness, and separation and loneliness 
and death; ‘and all the ills that flesh is heir to.’ 

Or, as one of the old Puritan commentators has it: 
‘The tower is so deep that no pioneer can undermine 
it, so thick that no cannon can breach it, so high that 
no ladder can scale it. ‘The righteous runneth into it, 
and is perched up there; and can look down like Lear 
from his cliff, and all the troubles that afflict the lower 
levels shall ‘show scarce so gross as beetles’ from the 
height where he stands, safe and high, hidden in the 
name of the Lord. 

I say little about the other side. Brethren! the world 
in any of its forms, the good things of this life in any 
shape, whether that of money or any other, can do a 
great deal for us. They can keep a great many incon- 
veniences from us, they can keep a great many cares 
and pains and sorrows fromus. I was going to say, to 
carry out the metaphor, they can keep the rifle-bullets 
from us. But, ah! when the big siege-guns get into 
position and begin to play; when the great trials that 
every life must have, sooner or later, come to open fire 
at us, then the defence that anything in this outer 
world can give comes rattling about our ears very 
quickly. It is like the pasteboard helmet which looked 
as good as if it had been steel, and did admirably as 
long as no sword struck it. 

There is only one thing that will keep us peaceful 





220 THE PROVERBS (CH. xx. 


and unharmed, and that is to trust our poor shelterless 
lives and sinful souls to the Saviour who has died for 
us. In Him we find the hiding-place, in which secure, 
as beneath the shadow of a great rock, dreaded evils 
will pass us by, as impotent to hurt as savages before a 
castle fortified by modern skill. All the bitterness of 
outward calamities will be taken from them before 
they reach us. Their arrows will still wound, but He 
will have wiped the poison off before He lets them be 
shot at us. The force of temptation will be weakened, 
for if we live near Him we shall have other tastes and 
desires. The bony fingers of the skeleton Death, who 
drags men from all other homes, will not dislodge us 
from our fortress - dwelling. Hid in Him we shall 
neither fear going down to the grave, nor coming up 
from it, nor judgment, nor eternity. Then, I beseech 
you, make no delay. Escape! flee for your life! A 
growing host of evil marches swift against you. Take 
Christ for your defence and cry to Him, 


‘Lo! from sin and grief and shame, 
Hide me, Jesus! in Thy name,’ 


A STRING OF PEARLS 


‘ Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging : and whosoever is deceived thereby is 
not wise. 2. The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion: whoso provoketh him 
to anger sinneth against his own soul. 3. It is an honour for a man to cease from 
strife: but every fool will be meddling. 4. The sluggard will not plough by reason 
of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing. 5. Counsel in 
the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it 
out. 6. Most men will proclaim every one his own goodness: but a faithful man 
who can find? 7. The just man walketh in his integrity: his children are blessed 
after him.’-—PROVERBS xx. 1-7. , 


THE connection between the verses of this passage 
is only in their common purpose to set forth some 
details of a righteous life, and to brand the opposite 


vs. 1-7] A STRING OF PEARLS 221 


vices. A slight affinity may be doubtfully traced in 
one or two adjacent proverbs, but that is all. 

First comes temperance, enforced by the picture of 
a drunkard. Wine and strong drink are, as it were, 
personified, and their effects on men are painted as 
their own characters. And an ugly picture it is, which 
should hang in the gallery of every young man and 
woman. ‘Wine is a mocker. Intemperance delights 
in scoffing at all pure, lofty, sacred things. It is the 
ally of wild profanity, which sends up its tipsy and 
clumsy ridicule against Heaven itself. If aman wants 
to lose his sense of reverence, his susceptibility for 
what is noble, let him take to drink, and the thing is 
done. If he would fain keep these fresh and quick, let 
him eschew what is sure to deaden them. Of course 
there are other roads to the same end, but there is no 
other end tothis road. Nobody ever knew a drunkard 
who did not scoff at things that should be reverenced, 
and that because he knew that he was acting in de- 
fiance of them. 

‘A brawler, or, as Delitzsch renders it, ‘ boisterous’ 
—look into a liquor-store if you want to verify that, 
or listen to a drunken party coming back from an ex- 
cursion and making night hideous with their bellow- 
ings, or go to any police court on a Monday morning. 
We in England are familiar with the combination on 
police charge-sheets, ‘drunk and disorderly.’ So does 
the old proverb-maker seem to have been. Drink takes 
off the brake, and every impulse has its own way, and 
makes as much noise as it can. 

The word rendered in Authorised Version ‘is de- 
ceived, and in Revised Version ‘erreth,’ is literally 
‘staggers’ or ‘reels,’ and it is more graphic to keep 
that meaning. There is a world of quiet irony in the 





222 THE PROVERBS (on. xx. 


unexpectedly gentle close of the sentence, ‘is not wise.’ 
How much stronger the assertion might have been! 
Look at the drunkard as he staggers along, scoffing at 
everything purer and higher than himself, and ready 
to fight with his own shadow, and incapable of self- 
control. He has made himself the ugly spectacle you 
see. Will anybody call him wise? 

The next proverb applies directly to a stabs of things 
which most nations have outgrown. Kings who can 
give full scope to their anger, and who inspire mainly 
terror, are anomalies in civilised countries now. The 
proverb warns that it is no trifle to rouse the lion from 
his lair, and that when he begins to growl there is 
danger. The man who stirs him ‘forfeits his own life, 
or, at all events, imperils it. 

The word rendered ‘ sins’ has for its original meaning 
‘misses, and seems to be so used here, as also in Proverbs 
viii. 36. ‘Against’ isa supplement. The maxim incul- 
cates the wisdom of avoiding conduct which might 
rouse an anger so sure to destroy its object. And that 
is a good maxim for ordinary times in all lands, mon- 
archies or republics. For there is in constitutional 
kingdoms and in republics an uncrowned monarch, 
to the full as irresponsible, as easily provoked, and 
as relentless in hunting its opponents to destruc- 
tion, as any old-world tyrant. Its name is Public 
Opinion. It is not well to provoke it. If a man 
does, let him well understand that he takes his life, 
or what is sometimes dearer than life, in his hand. 
Not only self-preservation, which the proverb and 
Scripture recognise as a legitimate motive, but higher 
considerations, dictate compliance with the ruling 
forces of our times, as far as may be. Conscience only 
has the right to limit this precept, and to say, ‘ Let the 


vs. 1-7] A STRING OF PEARLS 228 © 


brute roar, and never mind if you do forfeit your life. 
It is your duty to say “No,” though all the world should 
be saying “ Yes.”’ 

A slight thread of connection may be established 
between the second and third proverbs. The latter, 
like the former, commends peacefulness and condemns 
pugnacity. Men talk of ‘glory’ as the warrior’s meed, 
and the so-called Christian world has not got beyond 
the semi-barbarous stage which regards ‘honour’ as 
mainly secured by fighting. But this ancient proverb- 
maker had learned a better conception of what‘ honour’ 
or ‘glory’ was, and where it grew. 

‘Peace hath her victories 

No less renowned than war,’ 
said Milton. But our proverb goes farther than ‘no 
less,’ and gives greater glory to the man who never 
takes up arms, or who lays them down. The saying is 
true, not only about warfare, but in all regions of life. 
Fighting is generally wasted time. Controversialists 
of all sorts, porcupine-like people, who go through the 
world all sharp quills sticking out to pierce, are less to 
be admired than peace-loving souls. Any fool can ‘show 
his teeth,’ as the word for ‘quarrelling’ means. But it 
takes a wise man, and a man whose spirit has been 
made meek by dwelling near God in Christ, to with- 
hold the angry word, the quick retort. It is gene- 
rally best to let the glove flung down lie where it is. 
There are better things to do than to squabble. 

Verse 4is a parable as well as a proverb. If a man 
sits by the fireside because the north wind is blowing, 
when he ought to be out in the field holding the 
plough with frost-nipped fingers, he will beg (or, 
perhaps, seek for a crop) in harvest, and will find 
nothing, when others are rejoicing in the ‘slow result 





aie, | Nid », 


224 THE PROVERBS (CH. Xx. 


of winter showers’ and of their toilsome hours. So, 
in all life, if the fitting moments for preparation are 
neglected, late repentance avails nothing. The student 
who dawdles when he should be working, will be sure 
to fail when the examination comes on. It is useless 
to begin ploughing when your neighbours are driving 
their reaping machines into the fields. ‘There is a 
time to sow, and a time to reap.’ The law is inexorable 
for this life, and not less certainly so for the life to 
come. The virgins who cried in vain, ‘ Lord, Lord, open 
to us!’ and were answered, ‘Too late, too late, ye can- 
not enter now!’ are sisters of the man who was hin- 
dered from ploughing because it was cold, and asked 
in vain for bread when harvest time had come. ‘To-day, 
if ye will to hear His voice, harden not your hearts.’ 

The next proverb is a piece of shrewd common sense. 
It sets before us two men, one reticent, and the other 
skilful in worming out designs which he wishes to 
penetrate. The former is like a deep draw-well; the 
latter is like a man who lets down a bucket into it, 
and winds it up full. ‘Still waters are deep.’ The 
faculty of reading men may be abused to bad ends, but 
is worth cultivating, and may be allied to high aims, 
and serve to help in accomplishing these. It may aid 
good men in detecting evil, in knowing how to present 
God's truth to hearts that need it, in pouring comfort 
into closely shut spirits. Not only astute business men 
or politicians need it, but all who would help their 
fellows to love God and serve Him—preachers, teachers, 
and the like. And there would be more happy homes 
if parents and children tried to understand one another. 
We seldom dislike a man when we come to know him 
thoroughly. We cannot help him till we do. 

The proverb in verse 6 is susceptible of different 


vs. 1-7] A STRING OF PEARLS 225 


renderings in the first clause. Delitzsch and others 
would translate, ‘Almost every man meets a man who 
is gracious to him.’ The contrast will then be be- 
tween partial ‘grace’ or kindness, and thoroughgoing 
reliableness or trustworthiness. The rendering of the 
Authorised and Revised Versions, on the other hand, 
makes the contrast between talk and reality, profes- 
sions of goodwill and acts which come up to these. In 
either case, the saying is the bitter fruit of experience. 
Even charity, which ‘believeth all things,’ cannot but 
admit that soft words are more abundant than deeds 
which verify them. It is no breach of the law of love 
to open one’s eyes to facts, and so to save oneself from 
taking psper money for gold, except at a heavy dis- 
count. Perhaps the reticence, noted in the previous 
proverb, led to the thought of a loose-tongued pro- 
fession of kindliness as a contrast. Neither the one nor 
the other is admirable. The practical conclusion from 
the facts in this proverb is double—do not take much 
heed of men’s eulogiums on their own benevolence; do 
not trumpet your own praises. Caution and modesty 
are parts of Christian perfection. 

The last saying points to the hereditary goodness 
which sometimes, for our comfort, we do see, as well as 
to the halo from a saintly parent which often surrounds 
his children. Note that there may be more than mere 
succession in time conveyed by the expression ‘ after 
him.’ It may mean following in his footsteps. Such 
children are blessed, both in men’s benedictions and 
in their own peaceful hearts. Weighty responsibilities 
lie upon the children of parents who have transmitted 
to them a revered name. A Christian’s children are 
doubly bound to continue the parental tradition, and 
are doubly criminal if they depart from it. There is no 

P 


yu 


226 THE PROVERBS [CH. Xx. 


sadder sight than that of a godly father wailing over 
an ungodly son, unless it be that of the ungodly son 
who makes him wail. Absalom hanging by his curls 
in the oak-tree, and David groaning, ‘My son, my son!’ 
touch all hearts. Alas that the tragedy should be so 
often repeated in our homes to-day! 


THE SLUGGARD IN HARVEST 


‘The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in 
harvest, and have nothing.’—PROVERBS xx. 4. 


LIKE all the sayings of this book, this is simply a piece 
of plain, practical common sense, intended to inculeate 
the lesson that men should diligently seize the oppor- 
tunity whilst it is theirs. The sluggard is one of the 
pet aversions of the Book of Proverbs, which, unlike 
most other manuals of Eastern wisdom, has a profound 
reverence for honest work. 

He is a great drone, for he prefers the chimney-corner 
to the field, even although it cannot have been very 
cold if the weather was open enough to admit of 
ploughing. And he is a great fool, too, for he buys his 
comfort at a very dear price, as do all men who live for 
to-day, and let to-morrow look out for itself. 

But like most of the other sayings of this book, my 
text contains principles which are true in the highest 
regions of human life, for the laws which rule up there 
are not different from those which regulate the motions 
of its lower phases. Religion recognises the same 
practical common-sense principles that daily business 
does. I venture to take this as my text now, in 
addressing young people, because they have special 
need of, and special facilities for, the wisdom which it 
enjoins; and because the words only want to be turned 





v.4) THE SLUGGARD IN HARVEST) 227 


with their faces heavenwards in order to enforce the 
great appeal, the only one which it is worth my while 
to make, and worth your while to come here to listen 
to; the appeal to each of you, ‘I beseech you, by the 
mercies of God, that ye yield yourselves to God’ now. 

My object, then, will be perhaps best accomplished if 
I simply ask you to look, first, at the principles involved 
in this quaint proverb; and, secondly, to apply them in 
one or two directions. 

I. First, then, let us try to bring out the principles 
which are crystallised in this picturesque saying. 

The first thought evidently is: present conduct deter- 
mines future conditions. Life is a series of epochs, each 
of which has its destined work, and that being done, all 
is well; and that being left undone, all is ill. 

Now, of course, in regard to many of the accidents of 
a man’s condition, his conduct is only one, and by no 
means the most powerful, of the factors which settle 
them. The position which a man fills, the tasks which 
he has to perform, and the whole host of things which 
make up the externals of his life, depend upon far other 
conditions than any that he brings to them. But yet 
on the whole it is true that what a man does, and is, 
settles how he fares. And this is the mystical import- 
ance and awful solemnity of the most undistinguished 
moments and most trivial acts of this awful life of 
ours, that each of them has an influence on all that 
comes after, and may deflect our whole course into 
altogether different paths. It is not only the moments 
that we vulgarly and blindly call great which settle our 
condition, but it is the accumulation of the tiny ones; 
the small deeds, the unnoticed acts, which make up so 
large a portion of every man’s life. It is these, after 
all, that are the most powerful in settling what we 





228 THE PROVERBS (cH. Xx. 


shall be. There come to each of us supreme moments 
in our lives. Yes! and if in all the subordinate and in- 
significant moments we have not been getting ready 
for them, but have been nurturing dispositions and 
acquiring habits, and cultivating ways of acting and 
thinking which condemn us to fail beneath the require- 
ments of the supreme moment, then it passes us by, 
and we gain nothing from it. Tiny mica flakes have 
built up the Matterhorn, and the minute acts of life 
after all, by their multiplicity, make up life to be what 
itis. ‘Sand is heavy,’ says this wise book of Proverbs. 
The aggregation of the minutest grains, singly so light 
that they would not affect the most delicate balance, 
weighs upon us with a weight ‘heavy as frost, and deep 
almost as life.’ The mystic significance of the triviali- 
ties of life is that in them we largely make destiny, and 
that in them we wholly make character. 

And now, whilst this is true about all life, it is especi- 
ally true about youth. You have facilities for moulding 
your being which some of us older men would give a 
great deal to have again for a moment, with our 
present knowledge and bitter experience. The lava 
that has solidified into hard rock with us is yet molten 
and plastic with you. You can, I was going to say, be 
anything you make up your minds to; and, within 
reasonable limits, the bold saying is true. ‘Ask what 
thou wilt and it shall be given to thee’ is what nature 
and Providence, almost as really as grace and Christ, 
say to every young man and woman, because you are 
the arbiters, not wholly, indeed, of your destiny, and 
are the architects, altogether, of your character, which 
is more. 

And so I desire to lay upon your hearts this thread- 
bare old truth, because you are living in the ploughing 


v4] THE SLUGGARD IN HARVEST 229 


time, and the harvest is months ahead. Whilst it is 
true that every day is the child of all the yesterdays, 
and the parent of all the to-morrows, it is also true that 
life has its predominant colouring, varying at different 
epochs, and that for you, though you are largely in- 
heriting, even now, the results of your past, brief as it 
is, still more largely is the future, the plastic futr “e, in 
your hands, to be shaped into such forms as you will. 
‘The child is father of the man,’ and the youth has the 
blessed prerogative of standing before the mouldable 
to-morrow, and possessing a nature still capable of 
being cast into an almost infinite variety of form. 

But then, not only do you stand with special advan- 
tages for making yourselves what you will, but you 
specially need to be reminded of the terrible importance 
and significance of each moment. For this is the very 
irony of human life, that we seldom awake to the sense 
of its importance till it is nearly ended, and that the 
period when reflection would avail the most is precisely 
the period when it is the least strong and habitual. 
What is the use of an old man like me thinking about 
what he could make of life if he had it to do over again, 
as compared with the advantage of your doing it? Yet 
I dare say that for once that you think thus, my con- 
temporaries do it fifty times. So, not to abate one jot 
of your buoyancy, not to cast any'shadow over joys 
and hopes, but to lift you to a sense of the blessed 
possibilities of your position, I want to lay this principle 
of my text upon your consciences, and to beseech you 
to try to keep it operatively in mind—you are making 
yourselves, and settling your destiny, by every day of 
your plastic youth. 

There is another principle as clear in my text— 
viz., the easy road is generally the wrong one. The 





230 THE PROVERBS [cH. xx. 


sluggard was warmer at the fireside than he would be 
in the field with his plough in the north wind, and so he 
stopped there. There are always obstacles in the way 
of noble life. It is always easier, as flesh judges, to 
live ignobly than to live as Jesus Christ would have us 
live. ‘Endure hardness’ is the commandment to all 
who would be soldiers of any great cause, and would 
not fling away their lives in low self-indulgence. If a — 
man is going to be anything worth being, or to do any- 
thing worth doing, he must start with, and adhere to 
this, ‘to scorn delights and live laborious days.’ And 
only then has he a chance of rising above the fat dull 
weed that rots in Lethe’s stream, and of living any- 
thing like the life that it becomes him to live. 

Be sure of this, dear young friends, that self-denial 
and rigid self-control, in its two forms, of stopping 
your ears to the attractions of lower pleasures, and of 
cheerily encountering difficulties, is an indispensable 
condition of any life which shall at the last yield a 
harvest worth the gathering, and not destined to be 

‘Cast as rubbish to the void, 
When God hath made the pile complete.’ 

Never allow yourselves to be turned away from the 
plain path of duty by any difficulties. Never allow 
yourselves to be guided in your choice of a road by 
the consideration that the turf is smooth, and the 
flowers by the side of it sweet. Remember, the slug- 
gard would have been warmer, with a wholesome 
warmth, at the ploughtail than cowering in the chim- 
ney corner. And the things that seem to be difficulties 
and hardships only need to be fronted to yield, like the 
east wind in its season, good results in bracing and 
hardening. Fix it in your minds that nothing worth 
doing is done but at the cost of difficulty and toil. 


v.4) THESLUGGARD IN HARVEST 2381 


That is a lesson that this generation wants, even 
more than some that have lived. I suppose it is one of 
the temptations of older men to look askance upon the 
amusements of younger ones, but I cannot help lifting 
up here one word of earnest appeal to the young men 
and women of this congregation, and beseeching them, 
as they value the nobleness of their own lives, and their 
power of doing any real good, to beware of what seems 
to me the altogether extravagant and excessive love, 
and following after, of mere amusement which char- 
acterises this day to so large an extent. Better toil 
than such devotion to mere relaxation. 

The last principle here is that the season let slip is 
gone for ever. Whether my text, in its second picture, 
intends us to think of the sluggard when the harvest 
came as ‘begging’ from his neighbours; or whether, 
as is possibly the construction of the Hebrew, it simply 
means to describe him as going out into his field, and 
looking at it, and asking for the harvest and seeing 
nothing there but weeds, the lesson it conveys is the 
same—the old, old lesson, so threadbare that I should 
be almost ashamed of taking up your time with it 
unless I believed that you did not lay it to heart as 
you should. Opportunity is bald behind, and must be 
grasped by the forelock. Life is full of tragic might- 
‘have-beens. No regret, no remorse, no self-accusation, 
no clear recognition that I was a fool will avail one jot. 
The time for ploughing is past; you cannot stick the 
share into the ground when you should be wielding the 
sickle. ‘Too late’ is the saddest of human words. And, 
my brother, as the stages of our lives roll on, unless 
each is filled as it passes with the discharge of the 
duties, and the appropriation of the benefits which it 
brings, then, to all eternity, that moment will never 





232 THE PROVERBS [OH. xx. 


return, and the sluggard may beg in harvest that he 
may have the chance to plough once more, and have’ 
none. The student that has spent the term in indol- 
ence, perhaps dissipation, has no time to get up his 
subject when he is in the examination-room, with the 
paper before him. And life, and nature, and God's law, 
which is the Christian expression for the heathen one 
of nature, are stern taskmasters, and demand that the 
duty shall be done in its season or left undone for ever. 

II. In the second place, let me, just in a few words, 
carry the lamp of these principles of my text and flash 
its rays upon one or two subjects. 

Let me say a word, first, about the lowest sphere to 
which my text applies. I referred at the beginning of 
this discourse to this proverb as simply an inculcation 
of the duty of honest work, and of the necessity of 
being wide awake to opportunities in our daily work. 
Now, the most of you young men, and many of you — 
young women, are destined for ordinary trades, pro- 
fessions, walks in commerce; and I do not suppose it 
to be beneath the dignity of the pulpit to say this: Do © 
not trust to any way of getting on by dodges or specu- 
lation, or favour, or anything but downright hard work. 
Don’t shirk difficulties, don’t try to put the weight of 
the work upon some colleague or other, that you may 
have an easier life of it. Set your backs to your tasks, 
and remember that ‘in all labour there is profit’; and 
whether the profit comes to you in the shape of 
advancement, position, promotion in your offices, part- 
nerships perhaps, wealth, and the like, or no, the profit 
lies in the work. Honest toil is the key to pleasure. 

Then, let me apply the text in a somewhat higher 
direction. Carry these principles with you in the 
cultivation of that important part of yourself—your 


v4] ‘THE SLUGGARD IN HARVEST — 283 


intellects. What would some of us old students give if 
we had the flexibility, the power of assimilating new 
truth, the retentive memories, that you young people 
have? Some of you, perhaps, are students by pro- 
fession ; I should like all of you to make a conscience 
of making the best of your brains, as God has given 
them to you, a trust. ‘The sluggard will not plough 
by reason of the cold.’ The dawdler will read no books 
that tax his intellect, therefore shall he beg in harvest 
and have nothing. Amidst all the flood of feeble, 
foolish, flaccid literature with which we are afflicted at 
this day, I wonder how many of you young men and 
women ever set yourselves to some great book or sub- 
ject that you cannot understand without effort. Unless 
you do you are not faithful stewards of the supreme 
gift of God to you of that great faculty which appre- 
hends and lives upon truth. So remember thesluggard 
by his fireside; and do you get out with your plough. 

Again I say, apply these principles to a higher work 
still—that of the formation of character. Nothing will 
come to you noble, great, elevating, in that direction, 
unless it is sought, and sought with toil. 

C In woods, in waves, in wars, she wont to dwell, 
And will be found with peril and with pain ; 


Before her gate high Heaven did sweat ordain, 
And wakeful watches ever to abide.’ 


Wisdom and truth, and all their elevating effects 
upon human character, require absolutely for their 
acquirement effort and toil. You have the opportunity 
still. As I said a moment ago—you may mould your- 
selvesintonobleforms. But in the making of character 
we have to work as a painter in fresco does, with a 
swift brush on the plaster while it is wet. It sets and 
hardens in an hour. And men drift into habits which 





234 THE PROVERBS (oH. xx. 


become tyrannies and dominant before they know 
where they are. Don't let yourselves be shaped by 
accident, by circumstance. Remember that you can 
build yourselves up into forms of beauty by the help of 
the grace of God, and that for such building there must 
be the diligent labour and the wise clutching at oppor- 
tunity and understanding of the times which my text 
suggests. | 

And, lastly, let these principles applied to religion 
teach us the wisdom and necessity of beginning the 
Christian life at the earliest moment. I am by no 
means prepared to say that the extreme tragedy of my 
text can ever be wrought out in regard to the religious 
experience of any man here on earth, for I believe that 
at any moment in his career, however faultful and 
stained his past has been, and however long and ob- 
stinate has been his continuance in evil, a man may 
turn himself to Jesus Christ, and beg, and not in vain, 
nor ever find ‘nothing’ there. 

But whilst all that is quite true, I want you, dear 
young friends, to lay this to heart, that if you do not yield 
yourselves to Jesus Christ now, in your early days, and 
take Him for your Saviour, and rest your souls upon 
Him, and then take Him for your Captain and Com- 
mander, for your Pattern and Example, for your 
Companion and your Aim, you will lose what you can 
never make up by any future course. You lose years 
of blessedness, of peaceful society with Him, of illumina- 
tion and inspiration. You lose all the sweetness of the 
days which you spend away from Him. And if at the 
end you did come to Him, you would have one regret, 
deep and permanent, that you had not gone to Him 
before. If you put off, as some of you are putting off, 
what you know you ought to do—namely, give your 


v.4) THE SLUGGARD IN HARVEST 235 


hearts to Jesus Christ and become His—think of what 
you are laying up for yourselves thereby. You get 
much that it would be gain to lose—bitter memories, 
defiled imaginations, stings of conscience, habits that it 
will be very hard to break, and the sense of having 
wasted the best part of your lives, and having but the 
fag end to bring to Him. And if you put off, as some 
of you are disposed to do, think of the risk yourun. It 
is very unlikely that susceptibilities will remain if they 
are trifled with. You remember that Felix trembled 
once, and sent for Paul often; but we never hear that 
he trembled any more. And it is quite possible, and 
quite likely, more likely than not, that you will never 
be as near being a Christian again as you are now, 
if you turn away from the impressions that are made 
upon you at this moment, and stifle the half-formed 
resolution. 

But there is a more solemn thought still. This life 
as a whole is to the future life as the ploughing time is 
to the harvest, and there are awful words in Scripture 
which seem to point in the same direction in reference 
to the irrevocable and irreversible issue of neglected 
opportunities on earth, as this proverb does in regard 
to the ploughing and harvests of this life. 

I dare not conceal what seems to me the New Testa- 
ment confirmation and deepening of the solemn words 
of our text, ‘ He shall beg in harvest and have nothing,’ 
by the Master’s words, ‘Many shall say to me in that 
day, Lord! Lord! and I will say, I never knew you.’ 
The five virgins who rubbed their sleepy eyes and 
asked for oil when the master was at hand got none, and 
when they besought, ‘Lord! Lord! open to us,’ all the 
answer was, ‘Too late! too late! ye cannot enter now.’ 
Now, while it is called day, harden not your hearts. 





BREAD AND GRAVEL 


‘Bread of deceit is sweet toa man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled 

with gravel.’"—PROVERBs xXx. 17. 
‘BREAD of deceit’ is a somewhat ambiguous phrase, 
which may mean either of two things, and perhaps 
means both. It may either mean any good obtained 
by deceit, or good which deceives in its possession. In 
the former signification it would appear to have refer- 
ence primarily to unjustly gotten gain, while in the 
latter it has a wider meaning and applies to all the 
worthless treasures and lying delights of life. The 
metaphor is full of homely vigour, and the contrast 
between the sweet bread and the gravel that fills the 
mouth and breaks the teeth, carries a solemn lesson 
which is perpetually insisted upon in this book of 
Proverbs, and confirmed in every man’s experience. 

I. The first lesson here taught is the perpetuity of 
the most transient actions. 

We are tempted to think that a deed done is done 
with, and to grasp at momentary pleasure, and ignore 
its abiding consequences. But of all the- delusions 
by which men are blinded to the true solemnity of life 
none is more fatal than that which ignores the solemn 
‘afterwards’ that has to be taken into account. For, 
whatever issues in outward life our actions may have, 
they have all a very real influence on their doers; each 
of them tends to modify character, to form habits, to 
drag after itself a whole trail of consequences. Each 
strikes inwards and works outwards. The whole of a 
life may be set forth in the pregnant figure, ‘A sower 
went forth to sow, and ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, 


that shall he also reap. The seed may lie long dormant, 
296 


v.17] BREAD AND GRAVEL 2387 


but the green shoots will appear in due time, and pass 
through all the stages of ‘first the blade, and then the 
ear, and after that the full corn in the ear. The sower 
has to become the reaper, and the reaper has to eat 
of the bread made from the product of the long past 
sowing. Shall we have to reap a harvest of poisonous 
tares, or of wholesome wheat? ‘If ’twere done when 
‘tis done, ’twere well it were done quickly’; but since it 
begins to do when ’tis done, it were often better that it 
‘were not done at all. A momentary pause to ask 
ourselves when tempted to evil, ‘And what then?’ 
would burst not a few of the painted bubbles after 
which we often chase. 

Is there any reason to suppose that these permanent 
consequences of our transient actions are confined in 
their operation to this life? Does not such a present, 
which is mainly the continuous result of the whole 
past, seem at least to prophesy and guarantee a similar 
future? Most of us, I suppose, believe in the life 
continuous through and after death retributive in a 
greater degree than life here. Whatever changes may 
be involved in the laying aside of the ‘earthly house of 
this tabernacle,’ it seems folly to suppose that in it we 
lay aside the consequences of our past inwrought into 
our very selves. Surely wisdom suggests that we try 
to take into view the whole scope of our actions, and 
to carry our vision as far as the consequences reach. 
We should all be wiser and better if we thought more 
of the ‘afterwards, whether in its partial form in the 
present, or in its solemn completion in the future 
beyond. 

_II. The bitterness of what is sweet and wrong. 

There is no need to deny that ‘bread of deceit is 

sweet to aman.’ There is a certain pleasure in a lie, 





238 THE PROVERBS (on. xx. 


and the taste of the bread purchased by it is not 
embittered because it has been bought by deceit. If 
we succeed in getting the good which any strong desire 
hungers after, the gratification of the desire ministers 
pleasure. If a man is hungry, it matters not to his 
hunger how he has procured the bread which he 
devours. And so with all forms of good which appeal 
to sense. The sweetness of the thing desired and 
obtained is more subtle, but not less real, if it nourishes 
some inclination or taste of a higher nature. But such 
sweetness in its very essence is momentary, and even, 
whilst being masticated, ‘bread of deceit’ turns into 
gravel; and a mouthful of it breaks the teeth, 
excoriates the gums, interferes with breathing, and 
ministers no nourishment. The metaphor has but too 
familiar illustrations in the experience of us all. How 
often have we flattered ourselves with the thought, 
‘If I could but get this or that, how happy I should 
be’? How often when we got it have we been as 
happy as we expected? We had forgotten the voice of 
conscience, which may be overborne for a moment, but 
begins to speak more threateningly when its prohibi- 
tions have been neglected; we had forgotten that there 
is no satisfying our hungry desires with ‘bread of 
deceit,’ but that they grow much faster than it can be 
presented to them; we had forgotten the evil that was 
strengthened in us when it has been fed; we had 
forgotten that the remembrance of past delights often 
becomes a present sorrow and shame; we had forgotten 
avenging consequences of many sorts which follow 
surely in the train of sweet satisfactions which are 
wrong. 

So, even in this life nothing keeps its sweetness which 
is wrong, and nothing which is sweet and wrong avoids 


v.17] BREAD AND GRAVEL 239 


a tang of intensest bitterness ‘afterwards. And all 
that bitterness will be increased in another world, if 
there is another, when God gives us to read the book 
of our lives which we ourselves have written. Many a 
page that records past sweetness will then be felt to be 
written, ‘within and without,’ with lamentation and 
woe. 

All bitterness of what is sweet and wrong makes 
it certain that sin is the stupidest, as well as the 
wickedest, thing that a man can do. 

III. The abiding sweetness of true bread. 

In a subordinate sense, the true bread may be taken 
as Meaning our own deeds inspired by love of God and 
approved by conscience. They may often be painful 
to do, but the pain merges into calm pleasure, and 
conscience whispers a foretaste of heaven’s‘ Well done! 
good and faithful servant.’ The roll may be bitter to 
the lips, but, eaten, becomes sweet as honey; whereas 
the world’s bread is sweet at first but bitter at last. 
The highest wisdom and the most exacting conscience 
absolutely coincide in that which they prescribe, and 
Scripture has the warrant of universal experience in 
proclaiming that sin in its subtler and more refined 
forms, as well as in its grosser, is a gigantic mistake, 
and the true wisdom and reasonable regard for one’s 
own interest alike point in the same direction,—to a 
life based on the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, 
as being the life which yields the happiest results to- 
day and perpetual bliss hereafter. But let us not 
forget that in the highest sense Christ Himself is the 
‘true bread that cometh down from heaven.’ He may 
be bitter at first, being eaten with tears of penitence 
and painful efforts at conquering sin, but even in the 
first bitterness there is sweetness beyond all the earth 





240 THE PROVERBS (cH. xxi. 


can give. He ‘spreads a table before us in the presence 
of our enemies, and the bread which He gives tastes as 
the manna of old did, like wafers made of honey. Only 
perverted appetites loathe this light bread and prefer 
the strong-favoured leeks and garlics of Egypt. They 
who sit at the table in the wilderness will finally sit at 
the table prepared in the kingdom of the heavens. 


A CONDENSED GUIDE FOR LIFE 


‘My son, if thine heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine. 16. Yea, my 
reins shall rejoice, when thy lips speak right things. 17. Let not thine heart envy 
sinners: but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long. 18. For surely there 
is anend; and thine expectation shall not be cut off. 19. Hear thou, my son, and 
be wise, and guide thine heart in the way. 20.Be not among winebibbers; among 
riotous eaters of flesh: 21. For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to 
poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags. 22. Hearken unto thy 
father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she isold. 23. Buy the 
truth and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.’— 
PROVERBS xXiii. 15-23, 

THE precepts of this passage may be said to sum up 
the teaching of the whole Book of Proverbs. The 
essentials of moral character are substantially the 
same in all ages, and these ancient advices fit very 
close to the young lives of this generation. The gospel 
has, no doubt, raised the standard of morals, and, in 
many respects, altered the conception and perspective 
of virtues; but its great distinction lies, not so much 
in the novelty of its commandments as in the new 
motives and powers to obey them. Reverence for 
parents and teachers, the habitual ‘fear of the Lord, 
temperance, eager efforts to win and retain ‘the truth,’ 
have always been recognised as duties; but there is 
a long weary distance between recognition and prac- 
tice, and he who draws inspiration from Jesus Christ 
will have strength to traverse it, and to do and be 


what he knows that he should. 


vs.15-23] CONDENSED GUIDE FOR LIFE 241 


The passage may be broken up into four parts, 
which, taken together, are a young life’s directory of 
conduct which is certain to lead to peace. 

I. There is, first, an appeal to filial affection, and an 
unveiling of paternal sympathy (verses 15, 16). The 
paternal tone characteristic of the Book of Proverbs 
is most probably regarded as that of a teacher address- 
ing his disciples as his children. But the glimpse of the 
teacher's heart here given may well apply to parents 
too, and ought to be true of all who can influence 
other and especially young hearts. Little power 
attends advices which are not sweetened by manifest 
love. Many a son has been kept back from evil by 
thinking, ‘What would my mother say?’ and many a 
sound admonition has been nothing but sound, because 
the tone of it betrayed that the giver did not much 
care whether it was taken or not. 

A true teacher must have his heart engaged in his 
lessons, and must impress his scholars with the con- 
viction that their failure drives a knife into it, and 
their acceptance of them brings him purest joy. On 
the other hand, the disciple, and still more the child, 
must have a singularly cold nature who does not re- 
spond to loving solicitude and does not care whether 
he wounds or gladdens the heart which pours out its 
love and solicitude over him. May we not see shining 
through this loving appeal a truth in reference to the 
heart of the great Father and Teacher, who, in the 
depths of His divine blessedness, has no greater joy 
than that His children should walkinthetruth? God’s 
heart is glad when man’s is wise. 

Note, also, the wide general expression for goodness 
-—a wise heart, lips speaking right things. The former 
is source, the latter stream. Only a pure fountain will 

Q 





242 THE PROVERBS [cH. xr. 


send forth sweet waters. ‘If thy heart become wise’ 
is the more correct rendering, implying that there is 
no inborn wisdom, but that it must be made ours by 
effort. We are foolish; we become wise. 

What the writer means by wisdom he will tell us 
presently. Here he lets us see that it is a good to 
be attained by appropriate means. It is the founda- 
tion of ‘right’ speech. Nothing is more remarkable 
than the solemn importance which Scripture attaches 
to words, even more, we might almost say than to 
deeds, therein reversing the usual estimate of their 
relative value. Putting aside the cases of insincerity, 
falsehood, and the like, a man’s speech is a truer tran- 
script of himself than his deeds, because less hindered 
and limited by externals. The most precious wine 
drips from the grapes by their own weight in the vat, 
without a turn of the screw. ‘By thy words thou shalt 
be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.’ 
‘God’s great gift of speech abused’ is one of the com- 
monest, least considered, and most deadly sins. 

II. We have next the one broad precept with its sure 
reward, which underlies all goodness (verses 17, 18). 
The supplement ‘be thou,’ in the second clause of verse 
17, obscures the close connection of clauses. It is better 
to regard the verb of the first clause as continued in 
the second. Thus the one precept is set forth nega- 
tively and positively: ‘Strive not after [that is, seek 
not to imitate or be associated with] sinners, but after 
the fear of the Lord.’ The heart so striving becomes 
wise. So, then, wisdom is not the result of cultivating 
the intellect, but of educating the desires and aspira- 
tions. It is moral and religious, rather than simply 
intellectual. The magnificent personification of Wis- 
dom at the beginning of the book influences the 


vs.15-23] CONDENSED GUIDE FOR LIFE 248 


subsequent parts, and the key to understanding that 
great conception is, ‘The fear of the Lord is the begin- 
ning of Wisdom. The Greek goddess of Wisdom, 
noble as she is, is of the earth earthy when contrasted 
with that sovereign figure. Pallas Athene, with her 
clear eyes and shining armour, is poor beside the Wis- 
dom of the Book of Proverbs, who dwelt with God ‘or 
ever the earth was, and comes to men with loving 
voice and hands laden with the gifts of ‘durable riches 
and righteousness.’ 

He is the wise man who fears God with the fear 
which has no torment and is compact of love and 
reverence. He is on the way to become wise whose 
seeking heart turns away from evil and evil men, and 
feels after God, as the vine tendrils after a stay, or as 
the sunflower turns to the light. For such whole- 
hearted desire after the one supreme good there must 
be resolute averting of desire from ‘sinners. In this 
world full of evil there will be no vigorous longing for 
good and God, unless there be determined abstention 
from the opposite. We have but a limited quantity of 
energy, and if it is frittered away on multifarious 
creatures, none will be left to consecrate to God. There 
are lakes which discharge their waters at both ends, 
sending one stream east to the Atlantic and one west 
to the Pacific; but the heart cannot direct its issues of 
life in that fashion. They must be banked up if they 
are to run deep and strong. ‘All the current of my 
being’ must ‘set to thee’ if my tiny trickle is to reach 
the great ocean, to be lost in which is blessedness. 

And such energy of desire and direction is not to be 
occasional, but ‘all the day long.’ It is possible to make 
life an unbroken seeking after and communion with 
God, even while plunged in common tasks and small 





244 THE PROVERBS (cH. XXIII. 


cares. Itis possible to approximate indefinitely to that 
ideal of continual ‘ dwelling in the house of the Lord’; 
and without some such approximation there will be 
little realising of the Lord, sought by fits and starts, 
and then forgotten in the hurry of business or plea- 
sure. A photographic plate exposed for hours will 
receive the picture of far-off stars which would never 
show on one exposed for a few minutes. 

The writer is sure that such desires will be satisfied, 
and in verse 18 says so. The ‘reward’ (Rey. Ver.) 
of which he is sure is the outcome of the life of such 
seekers after God. It does not necessarily refer to the 
future after death, though that may be included in it. 
But what is meant is that no seeking after the fear of 
the Lord shall be in vain. There is a tacit emphasis on 
‘thy,’ contrasting the sure fulfilment of hopes set on 
God with the as sure ‘cutting off’ of those mistakenly 
fixed upon creatures and vanities. Psalm xxxvii. 
38, has the same word here rendered ‘reward, and 
declares that ‘the future [or reward] of the wicked 
shall be cut off. The great fulfilment of this assurance 
is reserved for the life beyond; but even here among 
all disappointments and hopes of which fulfilment is so 
often disappointment also, it remains true that the one 
striving which cannot be fruitless is striving for more 
of God, and the one hope which is sure to be realised, 
and is better when realised than expected, is the hope 
set on Him. Surely, then, the certainty that if we 
delight ourselves in God He will give us the desires of 
our hearts, is a good argument, and should be with us 
an operative motive for directing desire and effort 
away from earth and towards Him. 

III. Special precepts as to the control of the animal 
nature follow in verses 19-21. First, note that general 


vs. 15-23] CONDENSED GUIDE FOR LIFE 245 


one of verse 19, ‘Guide thine heart in the way. In 
most general terms, the necessity of self-government is 
laid down. There is a ‘way’ in which we should be 
content to travel. It is a definite path, and feet have 
to be kept from straying aside to wide wastes on either 
hand. Limitation, the firm suppression of appetites, 
the coercing of these if they seek to draw aside, are 
implied in the very conception of ‘the way.’ Andaman 
must take the upper hand of himself, and, after all 
other guidance, must be his own guide; for God guides 
us by enabling us to guide ourselves. 

Temperance in the wider sense of the word is pro- 
minent among the virtues flowing from fear of the 
Lord, and is the most elementary instance of ‘guiding 
the heart.’ Other forms of self-restraint in regard to 
animal appetites are spoken of in the context, but here 
the two of drunkenness and gluttony are bracketed 
together. They are similarly coupled in Deuteronomy 
xxi. 20, in the formula of accusation which parents are 
to bring against a degenerate son. Allusion to that 
passage is probable here, especially as the other crime 
mentioned in it—namely, refusal to ‘hear’ parental 
reproof—is warned against in verse 22. The picture, 
then, here is that of a prodigal son, and we have echoes 
of it in the great parable which paints first riotous 
living, and then poverty and misery. 

Drunkenness had obviously not reached the dimen- 
sions of a national curse in the date when this lesson 
was written. We should not put over-eating side 
by side with it. But its ruinous consequences. were 
plain then, and the bitter experience of England and 
America repeats on a larger scale the old lesson that 
the most productive source of poverty, wretchedness, 
rags, and vice, is drink. Judges and social reformers 





246 THE PROVERBS (CH. XXIII. 


of all sorts concur in that now, though it has taken 
fifty years to hammer it into the public conscience. 
Perhaps in another fifty or so society may have 
succeeded in drawing the not very obscure inference 
that total abstinence and prohibition are wise. At 
any rate, they who seek after the fear of the Lord 
should draw it, and act on it. 

IV. The last part is in verses 22and23. The appeal to 
filial duty cannot here refer to disciple and teacher, but 
to child and parents. It does not stand as an isolated 
precept, but as underscoring the important one which 
follows. Buta word must be spared forit. The habits - 
of ancient days gave a place to the father and mother 
which modern family life woefully lacks, and suffers 
in many ways for want of. Many a parent in these 
days of slack control and precocious independence might 
say, ‘If I be a father, where is mine honour?’ There 
was perhaps not enough of confidence between parent 
and child in former days, and authority on the one 
hand and submission on the other too much took 
the place of love; but nowadays the danger is all the 
other way—and it isa very real danger. 

But the main point here is the earnest exhortation of 
verse 23, which, like that to the fear of the Lord, sums 
up alldutyin one. The ‘truth’ is, like ‘wisdom, moral 
and religious, and not merely intellectual. ‘Wisdom’ 
is subjective, the quality or characteristic of the devout 
soul; ‘truth’ is objective, and may also be defined as 
the declared will of God. The possession of truth is 
wisdom. ‘The entrance of Thy words giveth light.’ It 
makes wise the simple. There is, then, such a thing as 
‘the truth’ accessible to us. We can know it, and are 
not to be for ever groping amid more or less likely 
guesses, but may rest in the certitude that we have hold 


vs.15-23] AFTERWARDS AND OUR HOPE 247 


of foundation facts. For us, the truth is incarnate in 
Jesus, as He has solemnly asserted. That truth we 
shall, if we are wise, ‘buy, by shunning no effort, 
sacrifice, or trouble needed to secure it. 

In the lower meanings of the word, our passage 
should fire us all, and especially the young, to strain 
every muscle of the soul in order to make truth for the 
intellect our own. The exhortation is needed in this 
day of adoration of money and material good. Nobler 
and wiser far the young man who lays himself out to 
know than he who is engrossed with the hungry desire 
to have! But in the highest region of truth, the buy- 
ing is ‘without money and without price, and all that 
Wwe can give in exchange is ourselves. We buythe truth 
when we know that we cannot earn it, and forsaking 
self-trust and self-pleasing, consent to receive it asa 
free gift. ‘Sell it not,—let no material good or advan- 
tage, no ease, slothfulness, or worldly success, tempt 
you to cast it away ; for its ‘fruit is better than gold, 
and its ‘revenue than choice silver. We shall make a 
bad bargain if we sell it for anything beneath the 
stars; for ‘wisdom is better than rubies, and he has 
been cheated in the transaction who has given up ‘the 
truth’ and got instead ‘the whole world.’ 


THE AFTERWARDS AND OUR HOPE 


‘Be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long. 18. For surely there is an end 
and thine expectation shall not be cut off. PROVERBS xxiii. 17, 18. 


THE Book of Proverbs seldom looks beyond the limits 
of the temporal, but now and then the mists lift and a’ 
wider horizon is disclosed. Our text is one of these 
exceptional instances, and is remarkable, not only as 
expressing confidence in the future, but as expressing 





248 THE PROVERBS [cH. XXIII 


it in a very striking way. ‘Surely there is an end,’ 
says our Authorised Version, substituting in the 
margin, for end, ‘reward.’ The latter word is placec in 
the text of the Revised Version. But neither ‘end’ 
nor ‘reward’ conveys the precise idea. The word so 
translated literally means ‘something that comes after.’ 
So it is the very opposite of ‘end,’ it is really that which 
lies beyond the end—the ‘sequel,’ or the ‘future ’—as 
the margin of the Revised Version gives alternatively, 
or, more simply still, the afterwards. Surely there is 
an afterwards behind the end. And then the proverb 
goes on to specify one aspect of that afterwards: 
‘Thine expectation’—or, better, because more simply, 
thy hope—shall not be cut off. And then, upon these 
two convictions that there is, if I might so say, an 
afterclap, and that it is the time and the sphere in 
which the fairest hopes that a man can paint to himself 
shall be surpassed by the reality, it builds the plain 
partial exhortation: ‘Be thou in the fear of the Lord 
all the day long.’ 

So then, we have three things here, the certainty of 
the afterwards, the immortality of hope consequent 
thereon, and the bearing of these facts on the present. 

I. The certainty of the hereafter. 

Now, this Book of Proverbs, as I have said in the 
great collection of popular sayings which makes the 
bulk of it, has no enthusiasm, no poetry, no mysticism. 
It has religion, and it has a very pure and lofty morality, 
but, for the most part, it deals with maxims of worldly 
prudence, and sometimes with cynical ones, and repre- 
sents, on the whole, the wisdom of the market-place, 
and the ‘man in the street. But now and then, as I 
have said, we hear strains of a higher mood. My text, 
of course, might be watered down and narrowed so as 


es 


vs. 17,18] AFTERWARDS AND OUR HOPE 249 


to point only to sequels to deeds realised in this life. 
And then it would be teaching us simply the very much 
needed lessons that even in this life, ‘ Whatever a man 
soweth that shall he also reap.’ But it seems to me 
that we are entitled to see here, as in one or two other 
places in the Book of Proverbs, a dim anticipation of a 
future life beyond the grave. I need not trouble you 
with quoting parallel passages which are sown thinly 
up and down the book, but . venture to take the words 
in the wider sense to which I have referred. 

Now, the question comes to be, where did the coiners 
of Proverbs, whose main interest was in the obvious 
maxims of a prudential morality, get this conviction ? 
They did not get it from any lofty experience of com- 
munion with God, like that which in the seventy- 
third Psalm marks the very high-water mark of Old 
Testament faith in regard to a future life, where the 
Psalmist finds himself so completely blessed and well 
in present fellowship with God, that he must needs 
postulate its eternal continuance, and just because he 
has made God the portion of his heart, and is holding 
fellowship with Him, is sure that nothing can intervene 
to break that sweet communion. They did not get it 
from any clear definite revelation, such as we have in 
the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which has made that 
future life far more than an inference for us, but they 
got it from thinking over the facts of this present life 
as they appeared to them, looked at from the stand- 
point of a belief in God, and in righteousness. And so 
they represent to us the impression that is made upon 
a man’s mind, if he has the ‘eye that hath kept watch 
o’er man’s mortality, that is made by the facts of this 
earthly life—viz. that it is so full of onward-looking, 
prophetic aspect, so manifestly and tragically, and yet 


250 THE PROVERBS _[cn.xxm. 


wonderfully and hopefully, incomplete and fragmen- 
tary in itself, that there must be something beyond in 
order to explain, in order to vindicate, the life that now 
is. And that aspect of fragmentary incompleteness 
is what I would insist upon for a moment now. 

You sometimes see a row of houses, the end one of 
them has, in its outer gable wall, bricks protruding 
here and there, and holes for chimney-pieces that are 
yet to be put in. And just as surely as that external 
wall says that the row is half built, and there are some 
more tenements to be added to it, so surely does the 
life that we now live here, in all its aspects almost, 
bear upon itself the stamp that it, too, is but initial 
and preparatory. You sometimes see, in the book- 
seller’s catalogue, a book put down ‘volume one; all 
that is published.’ That is our present life—volume 
one, all that is published. Surely there is going to be 
a sequel, volume two. Volume two is due, and will 
come, and it will be the continuation of volume one. 

What is the meaning of the fact that of all the 
creatures on the face of the earth only you and I, and 
our brethren and sisters, do not find in our environment 
enough for our powers? What is the meaning of the 
fact that, whilst ‘foxes have holes’ where they curl 
themselves up, and they are at rest, ‘and the birds of 
the, air have roosting-places, where they tuck their 
heads beneath their wings and sleep, the ‘son of man’ 
hath not where to lay his head, but looks round upon 
the earth and says, ‘The earth, O Lord, is full of Thy 
mercy. I am a stranger on the earth. What is the 
meaning of it? Here is the meaning of it: ‘Surely 
there is a hereafter.’ 

What is the meaning of the fact that lodged in men’s 
natures there lies that strange power of painting to 





— 


vs.17,18]) AFTERWARDS AND OUR HOPE 251 


themselves things that are not as though they were? 
So that minds and hearts go out wandering through 
Eternity, and having longings and possibilities which 
nothing beneath the stars can satisfy, or can develop? 
The meaning of it is this: Surely there is a hereafter. 
The man that wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, in his 
sceptical moment ere he had attained to his last con- 
clusion, says, in a verse that is mistranslated in our 
rendering, ‘He hath set Eternity in their hearts, there- 
fore the misery of man is great upon him.’ That is 
true, because the root of all our unrest and dissatisfac/ 
tion is that we need God, and God in Eternity, in order 
that we may be at rest. But whilst on the one hand 
‘therefore the misery of man is great upon him,’ on 
the other hand, because Eternity is in our hearts, 
therefore there is the answer to the longings, the 
adequate sphere for the capacities in that great future, 
and in the God that fills it. You go into the quarries 
left by reason of some great convulsion or disaster, by: 
forgotten races, and you will find there half excavated 
and rounded pillars still adhering to the matrix of the 
rock from which they were being hewn. Such un- 
finished abortions are all human lives if, when Death 
drops its curtain, there is an end. 

But, brethren, God does not so clumsily disproportion 
His creatures and their place. God does not so cruelly 
put into men longings that have no satisfaction, and 
desires which never can be filled, as that there should 
not be, beyond the gulf, the fair land of the hereafter. 
Every human life obviously has in it, up to the very 
end, the capacity for progress. Every human life, up 
to the very end, has been educated and trained, and 
that, surely, for something. There may be masters in 
workshops who take apprentices, and teach them their 





252 THE PROVERBS (cH, XxIIL 


trade during the years that are needed, and then turn 
round and say, ‘I have no work for you, so you must 
go and look for it somewhere else.’ That is not how 
God does. When He has trained His apprentices He 
gives them work todo. Surely there is a hereafter. 

But that is only part of what is involved in this 
thought. It is not only a state subsequent to the 
present, but it is a state consequent on the present, 
- and the outcome of it. The analogy of our earthly life 
avails here. To-day is the child of all the yesterdays, 
aud the yesterdays and to-day are the parent of to- 
morrow. The past, our past, has made us what we 
ar¢: in the present, and what we are in the present is 
m/aking us what we shall be in the future. And when 
we pass out of this life we pass out, notwithstanding 
a ll changes, the same men as we were. There may be 
rouch on the surface changed, there will be much taken 
duway, thank God! dropped, necessarily, by the cessation 
of the corporeal frame, and the connection into which 
it brings us with things of sense. There will be much 
added, God only knows how much, but the core of the 
man will remain untouched. ‘We all are changed by 
still degrees,’ and suddenly at last ‘ All but the basis of 
the evil. And so we carry ourselves with us into that 
future life, and, ‘what a man soweth, that shall he also 
reap. Oh that they were wise, that they understood 
this, that they would consider their afterward! 

II. Now, secondly, my text suggests the immortality 
of hope. ‘Thine expectation’—or rather, as I said, 
‘thy hope’—‘shall not be cut off.’ This is a character- 
istic of that hereafter. What a wonderful saying that 
is which also occurs in this Book of Proverbs, ‘The 
righteous hath hope in his death. Ah! we all know 
how swiftly, as years increase, the things to hope for 


vs.17,18) AFTERWARDS AND OUR HOPE 253 


diminish, and how, as we approach the end, less and 
less do our imaginations go out into the possibilities of 
the sorrowing future. And when the end comes, if 
there is no afterwards, the dying man’s hopes must 
necessarily die before he does. If when we pass into 
the darkness we are going into a cave with no outlet 
at the other end, then there is no hope, and you may 
write over it Dante’s grim word: ‘All hope abandon, 
ye who enter here.’ But let in that thought, ‘surely 
there is an afterwards, and the enclosed cave becomes 
a rock-passage, in which one can see the arch of light 
at the far end of the tunnel; and as one passes through 
the gloom, the eye can travel on to the pale radiance 
beyond, and anticipate the ampler ether, the diviner 
air, ‘the brighter constellations burning, mellow moons 
and happy stars, that await us there. ‘The righteous 
hath hope in his death. ‘Thine expectation shall not 
be cut off.’ 

But, further, that conviction of the afterward opens 
up for us a condition in which imagination is surpassed 
by the wondrous reality. Here, I suppose, nobody ever 
had all the satisfaction out of a fulfilled hope that he 
expected. The fish is always a great deal larger and 
heavier when we see it in the water than when it is 
lifted out and scaled. And I suppose that, on the 
whole, perhaps as much pain as pleasure comes from 
the hopes which are illusions far more often than they 
are realities. They serve their purpose in whirling us 
along the path of life and in stimulating effort, but 
they do not do much more. 

But there does come a time, if you believe that there 
is an afterwards, when all we desired and painted to 
ourselves of possible good for our craving spirits shall 
be felt to be but a pale reflex of the reality, like the 


~ 





254 THE PROVERBS (CH. XXIII. 


light of some unrisen sun on the snowfields, and we 
shall have to say ‘the half was not told to us.’ 

And, further, if that afterwards is of the sort that 
we, through Jesus Christ and His resurrection and 
glory, know to be, then all through the timeless eternity 
hope will be our guide. For after each fresh influx of 
blessedness and knowledge we shall have to say ‘it 
doth not yet appear what we shall be. ‘Thus now 
abideth’—and not only now, but then and eternally— 
‘these three—faith, hope, and charity,’ and hope will 
never be cut off through all the stretch of that great 
afterwards. sf 

III. And now, finally, notice the bearing of all this 
on the daily present. 

‘Be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long.’ 
The conviction of the hereafter, and the blessed vision 
of hopes fulfilled, are not the only reasons for that 
exhortation. A great deal of harm has been done, I 
am afraid, by well-meaning preachers who have drawn 
the bulk of their strongest arguments to persuade men 
to Christian faith from the thought of a future life. 
Why, if there were no future, it would be just as wise, 
just as blessed, just as incumbent upon us to ‘ be in the 
fear of the Lord all the day long. But seeing that 
there is that future, and seeing that only in it will hope 
rise to fruition, and yet subsist as longing, surely there 
comes to us a solemn appeal to ‘be in the fear of the 
Lord all the day long,’ which being turned into 
Christian language, is to live by habitual faith, in 
communion with, and love and obedience to, our Lord 
and Saviour Jesus Christ. 

Surely, surely the very climax and bad eminence of 
folly is shutting the eyes to that future that we all 
have to face; and to live here, as some of you are 


¥s.17,18] AFTERWARDS AND OUR HOPE 255 


doing, ignoring it and God, and cribbing, cabining, and 
confining all our thoughts within the narrow limits of 
the things present and visible. For to live so, as our 
text enjoins, is the sure way, and the only way, to 
make these great hopes realities for ourselves. 

Brethren, that afterwards has two sides to it. The 
prophet Malachi, in almost his last words, has a mag- 
nificent apocalypse of what he calls ‘the day of the 
Lord, which he sets forth as having a double aspect. 
On the one hand, it is lurid as a furnace, and burns up 
the wicked root and branch. I saw a forest fire this 
last autumn, and the great pine-trees stood there for a 
moment pyramids of flame, and then came down with 
a crash. So that hereafter will be to godless men. 
And on the other side, that ‘day of the Lord’ in the 
prophet’s vision was radiant with the freshness and 
dew and beauty of morning, and the Sun of Righteous- 
ness arose with healing in his wings. Which of the 
two is it going to be to us? We have all to face it. 
We cannot alter that fact, but we can settle how we 
shall face it. It will be to either the fulfilment of 
blessed hope, the ‘appearance of the glory of the great 
God and our Saviour,’ or else, as is said in this same 
Book of Proverbs: ‘The hope of the godless’ shall be 
like one of those water plants, the papyrus or the flag, 
which, when the water is taken away, ‘withereth up 
before any other herb. It is for us to determine 
whether the afterwards that we must enter upon shall 
be the land in which our hopes shall blossom and fruit, 
and blossom again immortally, or whether we shall 
leave behind us, with all the rest that we would fain 
keep, the possibility of anticipating any good. ‘Surely 
there is an afterwards, and if thou wilt ‘be in the fear 
of the Lord all the day long, then for evermore ‘thy 
hope shall not be cut off.’ ‘ 





THE PORTRAIT OF A DRUNKARD 


“Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling ? 

who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? 30, They that tarry 
long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. 31. Look not thou upon the 
wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself 
aright. 32. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like anadder. 33. 
Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse 
things. 34. Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as 
he that lieth upon the top of a mast. 35. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, 
and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall Iawake? I 
will seek it yet again.—PROVERBS xxiii. 29-35. 
THIs vivid picture of the effects of drunkenness leaves 
its sinfulness and its wider consequences out of sight, 
and fixes attention on the sorry spectacle which a man 
makes of himself in body and mind when he‘ puts an 
enemy into his mouth to steal away his brains.’ Disgust 
and ridicule are both expressed. The writer would warn 
his ‘son’ by impressing the ugliness and ludicrousness 
of drunkenness. The argument is legitimate, though 
not the highest. 

The vehement questions poured out on each other's 
heels in verse 29 are hot with both loathing and grim 
laughter. The two words rendered ‘ woe’ and ‘sorrow’ 
are unmeaning exclamations, very like each other in 
sound, and imitating the senseless noises of the 
drunkard. They express discomfort as a dog might 
express it. They are howls rather than words. That 
is one of the prerogatives won by drunkenness,—to 
come down to the beasts’ level, and to lose the power 
of articulate speech. The quarrelsomeness which goes 
along with certain stages of intoxication, and the 
unmeaning maudlin misery and whimpering into which 
it generally passes, are next coupled together. 

Then come a pair of effects on the body. The tipsy 


man cannot take care of himself, and reeling against 
256 


vs.29-35] PORTRAIT OF A DRUNKARD 257 


obstacles, or falling over them, wounds himself, and 
does not know where the scratches and blood came 
from. ‘Redness of eyes’ is, perhaps, rather ‘darkness,’ 
meaning thereby dim sight, or possibly ‘black eyes,’ as 
we say,—a frequent accompaniment of drunkenness, 
and corresponding to the wounds in the previous 
clause. It is a hideous picture, and one that should be 
burned in on the imagination of every young man and 
woman. The liquor-sodden, miserable wrecks that are 
found in thousands in our great cities, of whom this is 
a picture, were, most of them, in Sunday-schools in 
their day. The next generation of such poor creatures 
are, many of them, in Sunday-schools now, and may 
be reading this passage to-day. 

The answer to these questions has a touch of irony 
in it. The people who win as their possessions these 
six precious things have to sit up late to earn them. 
What a noble cause in which to sacrifice sleep, and 
turn night into day! And they pride themselves on 
being connoisseurs in the several vintages; they ‘know 
a good glass of wine when they see it. What a noble 
field for investigation! What a worthy use of the 
faculties of comparison and judgment! And how 
desirable the prizes won by such trained taste and 
delicate discrimination! 

In verses 31 and 32 weighty warning and dehortation 
follow, based in part on the preceding picture. The 
writer thinks that the only way of sure escape from the 
danger is to turn away even the eyes from the tempta- 
tion. He is not contented with saying ‘taste not,’ but 
he goes the whole length of ‘look not’; and that 
because the very sparkle and colour may attract. 
‘When it is red’ might perhaps better be rendered 
‘when it reddens itself, suggesting the play of colour, 

R 





258 THE PROVERBS (cH. XXIII. 


as if put forth by the wine itself. The word rendered 
in the Authorised Version and Revised Version ‘colour’ 
is literally ‘eye, and probably means the beaded 
bubbles winking on the surface. ‘ Moveth itself aright’ 
(Authorised Version) is not so near the meaning as 
‘goeth down smoothly’ (Revised Version). The whole 
paints the attractiveness to sense of the wine-cup in 
colour, effervescence, and taste. 

And then comes in, with startling abruptness, the 
end of all this fascination,—a serpent’s bite and a 
basilisk’s sting. The kind of poisonous snake meant in 
the last clause of verse 32 is doubtful, but certainly 
is one much more formidable than an adder. The 
serpent’s lithe gracefulness and painted skin hide a 
fatal poison ; and so the attractive wine-cup is sure to 
ruin those who look on it. The evil consequences are 
pursued in more detail in what follows. 

But here we must note two points. The advice given 
is to keep entirely away from the temptation. ‘Look 
not’ is safe policy in regard of many of the snares for 
young lives that abound in our modern society. It is 
not at all needful to ‘see life,’ or to know the secrets 
of wickedness, in order to be wise and good. ‘Simple 
concerning evil’ is a happier state than to have eaten 
the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Many a young 
man has been ruined, body and soul, by a prurient 
curiosity to know what sort of life dissipated men and 
women led, or what sort of books they were against 
which he was warned, or what kind of a place a 
theatre was, and soon. Eyes are greedy, and there is 
a very quick telephone from them to the desires. ‘The 
lust of the eye’ soon fans the ‘lust of the flesh’ into a 
glow. There are plenty of depths of Satan gaping for 
young feet; and on the whole, it is safer and happier 


vs.29-35] PORTRAIT OF A DRUNKARD 259 


not to know them, and so not to have defiling 
memories, nor run the risk of falling into fatal sins. 
Whether the writer of this stern picture of a drunkard 
was a total abstainer or not, the spirit of his counsel 
not to ‘look on the wine’ is in full accord with that 
practice. It is very clear that if a man is a total 
abstainer, he can never be a drunkard. As much 
cannot be said of the moderate man. 

Note too, how in all regions of life, the ultimate 
results of any conduct are the important ones. Con- 
sequences are hard to calculate, and they do not afford 
a good guidance for action. But there are many lines 
of conduct of which the consequences are not hard to 
calculate, but absolutely certain. It is childish to take 
a course because of a moment's gratification at the 
beginning, to be followed by protracted discomfort 
afterwards. To live for present satisfaction of desires, 
and to shut one’s eyes tight against known and assured 
results of an opposite sort, cannot be the part of a 
sensible man, to say nothing of a religious one. So 
moralists have been preaching ever since there was 
such a thing as temptation in the world; and men 
have assented to the common sense of the teaching, 
and then have gone straight away and done the exact 
opposite. 

‘What shall the end be?’ ought to be the question 
at every beginning. If we would cultivate the habit 
of holding present satisfactions in suspense, and of 
giving no weight to present advantages until we saw 
right along the road to the end of the journey, there 
would be fewer failures, and fewer weary, disenchanted 
old men and women, to lament that the harvest they 
had to reap and feed on was so bitter. There are 
other and higher reasons against any kind of fleshly 





260 THE PROVERBS (cH. XXIII. 


indulgence than that at the last it bites like a serpent, 
and with a worse poison than serpent’s sting ever 
darted; but that 7s a reason, and young hearts, which 
are by their very youth blessedly unused to look 
forward, will be all the happier to-day, and all the 
surer of to-morrow’s good, if they will learn to say, 
‘And afterwards—what ?’ 

The passage passes to a renewed description of the 
effects of intoxication, in which the disgusting and 
the ludicrous aspects of it are both made prominent. 
Verse 33 seems to describe the excited imagination of 
the drunkard, whose senses are no longer under his 
control, but play him tricks that make him a laughing- 
stock to sober people. One might almost take the 
verse to be a description of delirium tremens. ‘Strange 
things’ are seen, and perverse things (that is, unreal, 
or ridiculous) are stammered out. The writer has a 
keen sense of the humiliation to a man of being 
thus the fool of his own bewildered senses, and as 
keen a one of the absurd spectacle he presents; and 
he warns his ‘son’ against coming down to such a 
depth of degradation. 

It may be questioned whether the boasted quicken- 
ing and brightening effects of alcohol are not always, 
in a less degree, that same beguiling of sense and 
exciting of imagination which, in their extreme form, 
make a man such a pitiable and ridiculous sight. It is 
better to be dull and see things as they are, than to be 
brilliant and see things larger, brighter, or any way 
other than they are, because we see them through a 
mist. Imagination set agoing by such stimulus, will 
not work to as much purpose as if aroused by truth. 
God’s world, seen by sober eyes, is better than rosy 
dreams of it. If we need to draw our inspiration from 


vs.29-35] PORTRAIT OF A DRUNKARD 261 


alcohol, we had better remain uninspired. If we desire 
to know the naked truth of things, the less we have to 
do with strong drink the better. Clear eyesight and 
self-command are in some degree impaired by it 
always. The earlier stages are supposed to be exhilara- 
tion, increased brilliancy of fancy and imagination, 
expanded good-fellowship,andsoon. The latter stages 
are these in our passage, when strange things dance 
before cheated eyes, and strange words speak them- 
selves out of lips which their owner no longer controls. 
Is that a condition to be sought after? If not, do not 
get on to the road that leads to it. 

Verse 34 adds another disgusting and ridiculous 
trait. A man who should try to lie down and go to 
sleep in the heart of the sea or on the masthead of a 
ship would be a manifest fool, and would not keep life 
in him for long. One has seen drunken men laying 
themselves down to sleep in places as exposed and as 
ridiculous as these; and one knows the look of the 
heavy lump of insensibility lying helpless on public 
roads, or on railway tracks, or anywhere where the 
fancy took him. The point of the verse seems to be 
the drunken man’s utter loss of sense of fitness, and 
complete incapacity to take care of himself. He cannot 
estimate dangers. The very instinct of self-preserva- 
tion has forsaken him. There he lies, though as sure 
to be drowned as if he were in the depth of the sea, 
though on as uncomfortable a bed as if he were rock- 
ing on a masthead, where he could not balance himself. 

The torpor of verse 34 follows on the unnatural 
excitement of verse 33, as, in fact, the bursts of uncon- 
trolled energy in which the man sees and says strange 
things, are succeeded by a collapse. One moment 
raging in excitement caused by imaginary sights, the 





262 THE PROVERBS (cH. XXII. 


next huddled together in sleep like death,—_what a 
sight the man is! The teacher here would have his 
‘son’ consider that he may come to that, if he looks on 
the wine-cup. ‘Zhou shalt be’ so and so. It is very 
impolite, but very necessary, to press home the indi- 
vidual application of pictures like this, and to bid 
bright young men and women look at the wretched 
creatures they may see hanging about liquor shops, 
and remember that they may come to be such as these. 

Verse 35 finishes the picture. The tipsy man’s 
soliloquy puts the copestone on his degradation. He 
has been beaten, and never felt it. Apparently he is 
beginning to stir in his sleep, though not fully awake; 
and the first thing he discovers when he begins to 
feel himself over is that he has been beaten and 
wounded, and remembers nothing about it. A degrad- 
ing anesthetic is drink. Better to bear all ills than to 
drown them by drowning consciousness. There is no 
blow which a man cannot bear better if he holds fast 
by God’s hand and keeps himself fully exposed to the 
stroke, than if he sought a cowardly alleviation of it, 
after the drunkard’s fashion. 

But the pains of his beating and the discomforts of 
his waking do not deter the drunkard. ‘When shall I 
awake?’ He is not fully awake yet, so as to be able 
to get up and go for another drink. He is inthe stage 
of feeling sorry for himself, and examining his bruises, 
but he wishes he were able to shake off the remaining 
drowsiness, that he might ‘seek yet again’ for his 
curse. The tyranny of desire, which wakes into full 
activity before the rest of the man does, and the 
enfeebled will, which, in spite of all bruises and dis- 
comforts, yields at once to the overmastering desire, 
make the tragedy of a drunkard’s life. There comes a 


vs.29-35] CRIME OF NEGLIGENCE 263 


point in lives of fleshly indulgence in which the cravy- 
ing seems to escape from the control of the will alto- 
gether. Doctors tell us that the necessity for drink 
becomes a physical disease. Yes; but it is a disease 
manufactured by the patient, and he is responsible for 
getting himself into such a state. 

This tragic picture proves that there were many 
originals of it in the days when it was painted. Pro- 
bably there are far more, in proportion to population, 
in our times. The warning it peals out was never 
more needed than now. Would that all preachers, 
parents, and children laid it to heart and took the 
advice not even to ‘look upon the wine’! 


THE CRIME OF NEGLIGENCE 


‘If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are 
ready to be slain; 12. If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that 
pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he render 
to every man according to his works?’—PROVERBS xxiv. 11, 12. 


W2HATis called the missionary spirit is nothing else than 
the Christian church working in a particular direction. 
If a man has a conviction, the health of his own soul, 
his reverence for the truth he has learnt to love, his 
necessary connection with other men, make it a duty, 
a necessity, and a joy to tell what he has heard, and to 
speak what he believes. On these common grounds 
rests the whole obligation of Christ’s followers to speak 
the Gospel which they have received; only the obliga- 
tion presses on them with greater force because of the 
higher worth of the word and the deeper misery of 
men without it. The text contains nothing specially 
bearing on Christian missions, but it deals with the 
fault which besets us all in our relations and in life; 





264 THE PROVERBS [CH. XXIV. 


and the wholesome truths which it utters apply to our 
duties in regard to Christian missions because they 
apply to our duties in regard to every misery within 
our reach. They speak of the murderous cruelty and 
black sin of negligence to save any whom we can help 
from any sort of misery which threatens them. They 
appear to me to suggest four thoughts which I would 
now deal with :— 

I. The crime of negligence. 

Not to use any power is a sin; to omit to do any- 
thing that we can do is a crime: to withhold a help 
that we can render is to participate in the authorship 
of all the misery that we have failed to relieve. He 
who neglects to save a life, kills. There are more 
murderers than those who lift violent hands with 
malice aforethought against a hated life. Rulers or 
communities who leave people uncared for to die, who 
suffer swarming millions to live where the air is poison 
and the light is murky, and first the soul and then the 
body, are dwarfed and die; the incompetent men in 
high places, and the indolent ones in low, whose selfish- 
ness brings, and whose blundering blindness allows to 
continue, the conditions that are fatal to life—on these 
the guilt of blood lies. “Violence slays its thousands, 
but supine negligence slays its tens of thousands. 

And when we pass from these merely physical con- 
ditions to think of the world and of the Church in the 
world, where shall we find words weighty and burning 
enough to tell what fatal cruelty lies in the unthinking 
negligence so characteristic of large portions of Christ's 
professed followers? There is nothing which the 
ordinary type of Christian, so called, more needs than 
to be aroused to a living sense of personal responsi- 
bility for all the unalleviated misery of the world. For 


vs.11,12] CRIME OF NEGLIGENCE 265 


every one who has laid the sorrows of humanity on his 
heart, and has felt them in any measure as his own, 
there are a hundred to whom these make no appeal 
and give no pang. Within ear-shot of our churches 
and chapels there are squalid aggregations of stunted 
and festering manhood, of whom it is only too true 
that they are ‘drawn unto death’ and ‘ready to be 
slain,’ and yet it would be an exaggeration to say that 
the bulk of our congregations cast even a languid eye 
of compassion upon those, to say nothing of stretching 
out a hand to help. It needs to be dinned, far more 
than it is at present, into every professing Christian that 
each of us has an obligation which cannot be ignored or 
shuffled off, to acquaint ourselves with the glaring facts 
that force themselves upon all thoughtful men, and 
that the measure of our power is the measure of our 
obligation. The question, Has the church done its best 
to deliver these? needs to be sharpened to the point of 
‘Have I done my best?’ And the vision of multitudes 
perishing in the slums of a great city needs to be 
expanded into the vision of dim millions perishing in 
the wide world. 

II. The excuse of negligence. 

The shuffling plea, ‘Behold we knew it not, is a 
cowardly lie. It admits the responsibility to knowledge 
and pretends an ignorance which it knows to be partly 
a false excuse, and in so far as it is true, to be our 
own fault. We are bound to know, and the most 
ignorant of us does know, and cannot help knowing, 
enough to condemn our negligence. How many of us 
have ever tried to find out how the pariahs of civilisa- 
tion live who live beside us? Our ignorance so far as 
it is real is the result of a sinful indolence. And there 
is a sadder form of it in an ignorance which is the 





266 THE PROVERBS _[ex.xxrv. 


result of familiarity. We all know how custom dulls 
our impressions. It is well that it should be so, fora 
surgeon would be fit for little if he trembled and was 
shaken at the sight of the tumour he had to work to 
remove, as we should be; but his familiarity with 
misery does not harden him, because he seeks to remove 
the suffering with which he has become familiar. But 
that same familiarity does harden and injure the whole 
nature of the onlooker who does nothing to alleviate it. 
Then there is an ignorance of other suffering which is 
the result of selfish absorption in one’s own concerns. 
The man who is caring for himself only, and whose 
thoughts and feelings all flow in the direction of his 
own success, may see spread before him the most 
poignant sorrows without feeling one throb of brotherly 
compassion and without even being aware of what his 
eyes see. So, in so far as the excuse ‘we knew it not’ 
is true, it is no excuse, but an indictment. It lays bare 
the true reason of the criminal negligence as being a 
yet more criminal callousness as to the woe and loss in 
which such crowds of men whom we ought to recognise 
as brethren are sunken. 

III. The condemnation of negligence. 

The great example of God is put forward in the text 
as the contrast to all this selfish negligence. Note the 
twofold description of Him given here, ‘He that 
pondereth the heart, and ‘He that keepeth thy soul.’ 
The former of these presents to us God’s sedulous 
watching of the hearts of men, in contrast to our 
indolent and superficial looks; and in this divine 
attitude we find the awful condemnation of our dis- 
regard of our fellows. God ‘takes pain,’ so to speak, to 
see after His children. Are they not bound to look 
lovingly on each other? God seeks to know them. 


ve. 11,12] CRIME OF NEGLIGENCE 267: 


Are they not bound to know one another? Lofty 
disregard of human suffering is not God’s way. Is it 
ours? He ‘looks down from the height of His sanctuary 
to hear the crying of the prisoner.’ Should not we 
stoop from our mole-hill to see it? God has not too 
many concerns on His hands to mark the obscurest 
sorrow and be ready to help it. And shall we plead 
that we are too busy with petty personal concerns to 
take interest in helping the sorrows and fighting against 
the sins of the world? 

No less eloquently does the other name which is here 
applied to God rebuke our negligence. ‘He preserveth 
thy soul. By His divine care and communication of 
life, we live; and surely the soul thus preserved is 
thereby bound to be a minister of preservation to all 
that are ‘ready to be slain.’ The strongest motive for 
seeking to save others is that God has saved us. Thus 
this name for God touches closely upon the great 
Christian thought, ‘Christ has given Himself for me.’ 
And in that thought we find the true condemnation of 
a Christianity which has not caught from Him the 
enthusiasm for self-surrender, and the passion for 
saving the outcast and forlorn. If to be a Christian 
is to imitate Christ, then the name has little applica- 
tion to those who see ‘them that are drawn to death,’ 
and turn from them unconcerned and unconscious of 
responsibility. 

IV. The judgment of negligence. 

‘Doth not He render to every man according to his 
works?’ There is such a judgment both in the present 
and in the future for Christian men as for others. And 
not only what they do, but what they inconsistently 
fail to do, comes into the category of their works, and 
influences their position. It does so in the present, for 





268 THE PROVERBS (CH. XXIV. 


no man can cherish such a maimed Christian life as 
makes such negligence possible without robbing him- 
self of much that would tend to his own growth in 
grace and likeness to Jesus Christ. The unfaithful 
servant is poorer by the pound hidden im the napkin 
which might all the while have been laid out at interest 
with the money-changers, which would have increased 
the income whilst the lord was absent. We rob our- 
selves of blessed sympathies and of the still more 
blessed joy of service, and of the yet more blessed joy 
of successful effort, by our indolence and our negligence. 
Let us not forget that our works do follow us in this 
life as in the life to come, and that it is here as well as 
hereafter, that he that goeth forth with a full basket 
and scatters the precious seed with weeping, and yet 
with joy, shall doubtless come again bringing his 
sheaves with him. And if we stretch our view to take 
in the life beyond, what gladness can match that of the 
man who shall enter there with some who will be his 
joy and crown of rejoicing in that day, and of whom 
he shall be able to say, ‘Behold I and the children 
whom Thou hast given me!’ 

I venture earnestly to appeal to all my hearers for 
more faithful discharge of this duty. I pray you to 
open your ears to hear, and your eyes to see, and your 
hearts to feel, and last of all, your hands to help, the 
miseries of the world. Solemn duties wait upon great 
privileges. It is an awful trust to have Christ and His 
gospel committed to ourcare. We get it because from 
One who lived no life of luxurious ease, but felt all the 
woes of humanity which He redeemed, and forbore not 
to deliver us from death, though at the cost of His own. 
We get it for no life of silken indolence or selfish dis- 
regard of the sorrows of our brethren. If there is one 


vs.11,12] THE SLUGGARD’S GARDEN 269 


tear we could have dried and didn’t, or one wound we 
could have healed and didn’t, that is a sin; if we could 
have lightened the great heap of sorrow by one grain 
and didn’t, that is a sin; and if there be one soul that 
perishes which we might have saved and didn’t, the 
negligence is not merely the omission of a duty, but 
the doing of a deed which will be ‘rendered to us 
according to our works.’ 


THE SLUGGARD’S GARDEN 


‘I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void 
of understanding; 31. And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles 
had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down.’— 
PROVERBS xxiv. 30, 31. 


TuHIs picture of the sluggard’s garden seems to be in- 
tended asa parable. No doubt its direct simple meaning 
is full of homely wisdom in full accord with the whole 
tone of the Book of Proverbs; but we shall scarcely 
do justice to this saying of the wise if we do not 
see in ‘the ground grown over with thorns, and ‘the 
stone wall thereof broken down,’ an apologue of the 
condition of a soul whose owner has neglected to 
cultivate and tend it. ‘ 

I. Note first who the slothful man is. 

The first plain meaning of the word is to be kept 
in view. The whole Book of Proverbs brands laziness 
as the most prolific source of poverty. Honest toil 
is to it the law of life. It is never weary of reiterating 
‘In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread’; and 
it condemns all swift modes of getting riches without 
labour. No doubt the primitive simplicity of life as 
set forth in this book seems far behind the many 
ingenuities by which in our days the law is evaded. 
How much of Stock Exchange speculation and ‘Com- 





270 THE PROVERBS [CH. XXIV. 


pany promoters’ gambling would survive the applica- 
tion of the homely old law ? 

But it is truer in the inward life than in the outward 
that ‘the hand of the diligent maketh rich.’ After all, 
the differences between men who truly ‘succeed’ and 
the human failures, which are so frequent, are more 
moral than intellectual. It has been said that genius 
is, after all, ‘the capacity for taking infinite pains’; 
and although that is an exaggerated statement, and 
an incomplete analysis, there is a great truth in it, 
and it is the homely virtue of hard work which tells 
in the long run, and without which the most brilliant 
talents effect but little. However gifted a man may 
be, he will be a failure if he has not learned the great 
secret of dogged persistence in often unwelcomed toil. 
No character worth building up is built without con- 
tinuous effort. If a man does not labour to be good, 
he will surely become bad. It is an old axiom that 
no man attains superlative wickedness all at once, 
and most certainly no man leaps to the height of the 
goodness possible to his nature by one spring. He 
has laboriously, and step by step, to climb the hill. 
Progress in moral character is secured by long-con- 
tinued walking upwards, not by a jump. 

We note that in our text ‘the slothful’ is paralleled 
by ‘the man void of understanding’; and the parallel 
suggests the stupidity in such a world as this of letting 
ourselves develop according to whims, or inclinations, 
or passions; and also teaches that ‘understanding’ is 
meant to be rigidly and continuously brought to bear 
on actions as director and restrainer. If the ship is 
not to be wrecked on the rocks or to founder at sea, 
Wisdom’s hand must hold the helm. Diligence alone 
is not enough unless directed by ‘ understanding.’ 


vs. 30,31] THE SLUGGARD’S GARDEN 271 


II. What comes of sloth. 

The description of the sluggard’s garden brings into 
view two things, the abundant, because unchecked, 
growth of profitless weeds, and the broken down stone 
wall. Both of these results are but too sadly and 
evidently true in regard to every life where rigid 
and continuous control has not been exercised. It is 
a familiar experience known, alas! to too many of us, 
that evil things, of which the seeds are in us all, grow 
up unchecked if there be not constant supervision and 
self-command. If we do not carefully cultivate our 
little plot of garden ground, it will soon be overgrown 
by weeds. ‘Ill weeds grow apace’ as the homely 
wisdom of common experience crystallises into a sig- 
nificant proverb. And Jesus has taught the sadder 
truth that ‘thorns spring up and choke the word and 
it becometh unfruitful. In the slothful man’s soul 
evil will drive out good as surely as in the struggle 
for existence the thorns and nettles will cover the 
face of the slothful man’s garden. In country places 
we sometimes come across a ruined house with what 
was a garden round it, and here and there still springs 
up a flower seeking for air and light in the midst of 
a smothering mass of weeds. They needed no kindly 
gardener’s hand to make them grow luxuriantly; 7¢ can 
barely put out a pale petal unless cared for and guarded. 

But not only is there this unchecked growth, but 
‘the stone wall thereof was broken down. The soul 
was unfenced. The solemn imperative of duty ceases 
to restrain or to impel in proportion as a man yields 
slothfully to the baser impulses of his nature. Nothing 
is hindered from going out of, nor for coming into, an 
unfenced soul, and he that ‘hath no rule over his own 
spirit, but is like a ‘city broken down without walls, 





272 THE PROVERBS (cH. xxrv. 


is certain sooner or later to let much go forth from 
that spirit that should have been rigidly shut up, and 
to let many an enemy come in that will capture the 
city. Itis not yet safe to let any of the fortifications 
fall into disrepair, and they can only be kept in their 
massive strength by continuous vigilance, 

III. How sloth excuses itself. 

Our text is followed at the distance of one verse 
with what seemed to be the words of the sluggard 
in answer to the attempt to awake him: ‘ Yet a little 
sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to 
sleep. They are a quotation from an earlier chapter 
(ch. vi.) where ‘ His Laziness’ is sent to ‘consider the 
ways of the ant and be wise. They are a drowsy peti- 
tion which does not dispute the wisdom of the call to 
awake, but simply craves for a little more luxurious 
laziness from which he has unwillingly been aroused. 
And is it not true that we admit too late the force of 
the summons and yet shrink from answering it? Do 
we not cheat ourselves and try to deceive God with the 
promise that we will set about amendment soon? This 
indolent sleeper asks only for a little: ‘A little sleep, 
a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep? 
Do we not all know that mood of mind which con- 
fesses our slothfulness and promises to be wide awake 
to-morrow but would fain bargain to be left undis- 
turbed to-day? The call ‘Awake thou that sleepest 
and arise from the dead!’ rings from Christ's lips in 
the ears of every man, and he who answers, ‘I will 
presently, but must sleep a little longer, may seem to 
himself to have complied with the call, but has really 
refused it. The ‘little more’ generally becomes much 
more; and the answer ‘presently, alas! too often 
becomes the answer ‘never. When a man is roused 


vs. 30,31] THE SLUGGARD’S GARDEN 273: 


so as to be half awake, the only safety for him is 
immediately to rise and clothe himself; the head that 
drowsily droops back on the pillow after he has heard 
the morning’s call, is likely to lie there long. Now, 
not ‘by-and-by’ is the time to shake off the bonds 
of sloth to cultivate our garden. 

IV. How sloth ends. 

The sleeper’s slumber is dramatically represented as 
being awakened by armed robbers who bring a grim 
awakening. ‘Poverty’ and ‘want’ break in on his ‘fold- 
ing hands to sleep. That is true as regards the out- 
ward life, where indulgence in literal slothfulness 
brings want, and the whole drift of things executes 
on the sluggard the sentence that if ‘any man will 
. not work, neither shall he eat.’ 

But the picture is more sadly and fatally true con- 
cerning the man who has made his earthly life ‘a 
little sleep’ as concerns heavenly things, and in spite 
of his beseechings, is roused to life and consciousness 
of himself and of God by death. That man’s ‘poverty’ 
in his lack of all that is counted as wealth in the 
world of realities to which he goes will indeed come 
as a robber. I would press upon you all the plain 
question, Is this fatal slothfulness characteristic of 
me? It may co-exist with, and indeed is often the 
consequence of vehement energy and continuous work 
to secure wealth, or wisdom, or material good; and 
the contrast between a man who is all eagerness in 
regard to the things that don’t matter, and all careless- 
ness in regard to the things that do, is the tragedy 
of life amongst us. My friend! if your garden has 
been suffered by you to be overgrown with weeds, 
be sure of this, that one day you will be awakened 
from the slumber that you would fain continue, and 

s 





274 THE PROVERBS (on. xxv. 


will find yourself in a life where your ‘poverty’ will 
come as a robber and your want of all which there 
is counted treasure ‘as an armed man.’ 

One word more. Christ's parable of the sower may 
be brought into relationship with this parable. He 
sows the true seed in our hearts, but when sown, it. 
too, has to be cared for and tended. If it is sown 
in the sluggard’s garden, it will bring forth few ears, 
and the tares will choke the wheat. 


AN UNWALLED CITY 


‘He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, 

and without walls.’-—PROVERBS xxv. 28. 
THE text gives us a picture of a state of society when 
an unwalled city is no place for men to dwell in. In 
the Europe of to-day there are still fortified places, 
but for the most part, battlements are turned into 
promenades; the gateways are gateless; the sweet 
flowers blooming where armed feet used to tread; and 
men live securely without bolts and bars. But their 
spirits cannot yet afford to raise their defences and 
fling themselves open to all comers. 

We may see here three points: the city defenceless, 
or human nature as it is; the city defended, human 
nature as it may be in Christ; the city needing no 
defence, human nature as it will be in heaven. 

I. The city defenceless, or human nature as it is. 

Here we are in a state of warfare which calls for 
constant shutting out of enemies. Temptations are 
everywhere; our foes compass us like bees; evils of 
many sorts seduce. We can picture to ourselves 
some little garrison holding a lonely outpost against 


v. 28] AN UNWALLED CITY 275 


lurking savages ready to attack if ever the defenders 
slacken their vigilance for a moment. And that is 
the truer picture of human nature as it is than the 
one by which most men are deluded. Life is not a 
playground, but an arena of grim, earnest fighting. 
No man does right in his sleep; no man does right 
without a struggle. 

The need for continual vigilance and self-control 
comes from the very make of our souls, for our nature 
is not ademocracy, but a kingdom. In us all there 
are passions, desires, affections, all of which may lead 
to vice or to virtue: and all of which evidently call 
out for direction, for cultivation, and often for re- 
pression. Then there are peculiarities of individual 
character which need watching lest they become 
excessive and sinful. Further, there are qualities 
which need careful cultivation and stimulus to bring 
them into due proportion. We each of us receive, as 
it were, an undeveloped self, and have entrusted to us 
potential germs which come to nothing, or shoot up 
with a luxuriance that stifles unless we exercise a con- 
trolling power. Besides all this, we all carry in us 
tendencies which are positively, and only, sinful. There 
would be no temptation if there were no such. 

But the slightest inspection of our own selves clearly 
points out, not only what in us needs to be con- 
trolled, but that in us which is meant to control. The 
will is regal; conscience is meant to govern the will, 
and its voice is but the echo of God’s law. 

But, while all this is true, it is too sadly true that 
the accomplishment of this ideal is impossible in our 
own strength. Ourown sad experience tells us that we 
cannot govern ourselves; and our observations of our 
brethren but too surely indicate that they too are the 


276 THE PROVERBS . (cm. xxv. 


prey of rebellious, anarchical powers within, and of 
temptations, against the rush of which they and we 
are as powetless as a voyager in a bark-canoe, caught 
in the fatal drift of Niagara. Conscience has a voice, 
but no hands; it can speak, but if its voice fails, it 
cannot hold us back. From its chair it can bid the 
waves breaking at our feet roll back, as the Saxon 
king did, but their tossing surges are deaf. As help- 
less as the mud walls of some Indian hill-fort against 
modern artillery, is the defence, in one’s own strength, 
of one’s own self against the world. We would gladly 
admit that the feeblest may do much to ‘keep himself 
unspotted from the world’; but we must, if we recog- 
nise facts, confess that the strongest cannot do all. 
No man can alone completely control his own nature; 
no man, unenlightened by God, has a clear, full view of 
duty, nor a clear view of himself. Always there is 
some unguarded place: 


‘Unless above himself he can 
Erect himself, how mean a thing is man!’ 


but no man can so lift himself so as that self will not 
drag him down. The walls are broken down and the 
troops of the spoilers sack the city. 

II. The defended city, or human nature as it may be 
in Christ. 

If our previous remarks are true, they give us 
material for judging how far the counsels of some 
very popular moral teachers should be followed. It 
is a very old advice, ‘know thyself’; and it is a very 
modern one that 


‘Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control 
Lead life to sovereign power.’ 


But if these counsels are taken absolutely and with- 





v. 28] AN UNWALLED CITY 277 


out reference to Christ and His work, they are 
‘counsels of despair,’ demanding what we cannot give, 
and promising what they cannot bestow. When we 
know Christ, we shall know ourselves; when He is the 
self of ourselves, then, and only then, shall we rever- 
ence and can we control the inner man. The city of 
Mansoul will then be defended when ‘the peace of God 
keeps our hearts and minds in Jesus.’ 

He who submits himself to Christ is lord of himself 
as none else are. He has a light within which teaches 
him what is sin. He has a love within which puts out 
the flame of temptation, as the sun does a coal fire. 
He has a motive to resist; he has power for resistance ; 
he has hope in resisting. Only thus are the walls 
broken down rebuilded. And as Christ builds our city 
‘on firmer foundations, He will appear in His glory, 
and will ‘lay the windows in agates, and all thy 
borders in precious stones.’ The sure way to bring our 
ruined earth, ‘without form and void,’ into a cosmos 
of light and beauty, is to open our spirit for the Spirit 
of God to ‘brood upon the face of the waters.’ Other- 
wise the attempts to rule over our own spirit will 
surely fail; but if we let Christ rule over our spirit, 
then it will rule itself. 

But let us ever remember that he who thus submits to 
Christ, and can truly say, ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ 
liveth in me, still needs defence. The strife does not 
thereby cease; the enemies still swarm; sin is not 
removed. There will be war to the end, and war for 
ever; but He will ‘keep our heads in the day of 
battle’; and though often we may be driven from the 
walls, and outposts may be lost, and gaping breaches 
made, yet the citadel shall be safe. If only we see to 
it that ‘He is the glory in the midst of us,’ He will be 





278 THE PROVERBS (oH. xxv. 


‘a wall of fire round about us.’ Our nature as it may 
be in Christ is a walled city as needing defence, and as 
possessing the defence which it needs. 

III. The city defenceless, and needing no defence; 
that is, human nature as it will be hereafter. 

‘The gates shall not be shut day nor night, for 
‘everything that defileth’ is without. We know but 
little of that future, what we do know will, surely, 


be theirs who here have been ‘guarded by the power 


of God, through faith, unto salvation.’ That salvation 
will bring with it the end for the need of guardianship; 
though it leaves untouched the blessed dependence, 
we shall stand secure when it is impossible to fall. 
And that impossibility will be realised, partly, as we 
know, from change in surroundings, partly from the 
dropping away of flesh, partly from the entire har- 
mony of our souls with the will of God. Our ignor- 
ance of that future is great, but our knowledge of it is 
greater, and our certainty of it is greatest of all. 

This is what we may become. Dear friends! toil no 
longer at the endless, hopeless task of ruling those 
turbulent souls of yours; you can never rebuild the 
walls already fallen. Give up toiling to attain calmness, 
peace, self-command. Let Christ do all for you, and 
let Him in to dwell in you and be all to you. Builded 
on the true Rock, we shall stand stately and safe amid 
the din of war. He will watch over us and dwell in us, 
and we shall be as ‘a city set on a hill, impregnable, 
a virgin city. So may it be with each of us while strife 
shall last, and hereafter we may quietly hope to be as 
a city without walls, and needing none; for they that 
hated us shall be far away, for between us and them 
is‘a great gulf fixed, so that they cannot cross it to 
disturb us any more; and we shall dwell in the city of 


‘ 
: 





v. 28] THE WEIGHT OF SAND 279 


God, of which the name is Salem, the city of peace, 
whose King is Himself, its Defender and its Rock, its 
Fortress and its high Tower. 


THE WEIGHT OF SAND 
‘The sand is weighty.’ PROVERBS. xxvii. 3. 


Tus Book of Proverbs has a very wholesome horror of 
the character which it calls ‘a fool’; meaning thereby, 
not so much intellectual feebleness as moral and re- 
ligious obliquity, which are the stupidest things that a 
man can be guilty of. My text comes from a very 
picturesque and vivid description, by way of compari- 
son, of the fatal effects of such a man’s passion. The 
proverb-maker compares two heavy things, stones and 
sand, and says that they are feathers in comparison 
with the immense lead-like weight of such a man’s 
wrath. 

Now I have nothing more to do with the immediate 
application of my text. I want to make a parable out 
of it. What is lighter than a grain of sand? What is 
heavier than a bagful of it? As the grains fall one by 
one, how easily they can be blown away! Let them 
gather, and they bury temples, and crush the solid 
masonry of pyramids. ‘Sand is weighty. The ac- 
cumulation of light things is overwhelmingly ponder- 
ous. Are there any such things in our lives? If there 
are, what ought wetodo? So you get the point of view 
from which I want to look at the words of our text. 

I. The first suggestion that I make is that they 
remind us of the supreme importance of trifles. 

If trivial acts are unimportant, what signifies the life 
of man? For ninety-nine and a half per cent. of every 





280 THE PROVERBS (cH. XXVII. 


man’s life is made up of these light nothings; and 
unless there is potential greatness in them, and they 
are of importance, then life is all ‘a tale told by an 
idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ 
Small things make life; and if they are small, then 
it is so too. 

But remember, too, that the supreme importance of 
so-called trivial actions is seen in this, that there may 
be every bit as much of the noblest things that belong 
to humanity condensed in, and brought to bear upon, 
the veriest trifle that a man can do, as on the greatest 
things that he can perform. We are very poor judges 
of what is great and what is little. We have a very 
vulgar estimate that noise and notoriety and the secur- 
ing of, not great but ‘big,’ results of a material kind 
make the deeds by which they are secured, great ones. 
And we think that it is the quiet things, those that do 
not tell outside at all, that are the small ones. 

Well! here is a picture for you. Half-a-dozen shabby, 
travel-stained Jews, sitting by a river-side upon the 
grass, talking to a handful of women outside the gates 
of a great city. Years before that, there had been 
what the world calls a great event, almost on the same 
ground—a sanguinary fight, that had settled the 
emperorship of the then civilised world, for a time. 
I want to know whether the first preaching of the 
Gospel in Europe by the Apostle Paul, or the battle 
of Philippi, was the great event, and which of the two 
was the little one. I vote for the Jews on the grass, 
and let all the noise of the fight, though it reverberated 
through the world for a bit, die away, as ‘a little dust 
that rises up, and is lightly laid again.’ Not the noisy 
events are the great ones; and as much true greatness 
may be manifested in a poor woman stitching in her 


ee — 


v. 3] THE WEIGHT OF SAND 281 


garret as in some of the things that have rung through 
the world and excited all manner of vulgar applause. 
Trifles may be, and often are, the great things in life. 

And then remember, too, how the most trivial actions 
have a strange knack of all at once leading on to large 
results, beyond what could have been expected. A man 
shifts his seat in a railway carriage, from some pass- 
ing whim, and five minutes afterwards there comes a 
collision, and the bench where he had been sitting is 
splintered up, and the place where he is sitting is un- 
touched, and the accidental move has saved his life. 
According to the old story a boy, failing in applying 
for a situation, stoops down in the courtyard and picks 
up a pin, and the millionaire sees him through the 
window, and it makes his fortune. We cannot tell 
what may come of anything; and since we do not 
know the far end of our deeds, let us be quite sure that 
we have got the near end of them right. Whatever 
may be the issue, let us look after the motive, and then 
all will be right. Small seeds grow to be great trees, 
and in this strange and inexplicable network of things 
which men eall circumstances, and Christians call 
Providence, the only thing certain is that ‘great’ and 
‘small’ all but cease to be a tenable, and certainly alto- 
gether cease to be an important distinction. 

Then another thing which I would have you re- 
member is, that it is these trivial actions which, in their 
accumulated force, make character. Men are not made 
by crises. The crises reveal what we have made our- 
selves by the trifles. The way in which we do the 
little things forms the character according to which we 
shall act when the great thingscome. If the crew of 
@ man-of-war were not exercised at boat and fire drill 
during many a calm day, when all was safe, what 





282 THE PROVERBS (cH. XxXvIL. 


would become of them when tempests were raging, or 
flames breaking through the bulk-heads? It is no time 
to learn drill then. And we must make our characters 
by the way in which, day out and day in, we do little 
things, and find in them fields for the great virtues 
which will enable us to front the crises of our fate un 
blenching, and to master whatsoever difficulties come 
in our path. Geologists nowadays distrust, for the 
most part, theories which have to invoke great forces 
in order to mould the face of a country. They tell us 
that the valley, with its deep sides and wide opening to 
the sky, may have been made by the slow operation of 
a tiny brooklet that trickles now down at its base, and 
by erosion of the atmosphere. So we shape ourselves 
—and that is a great thing—by the way we do small 
things. 

Therefore, I say to you, dear friends! think solemnly 
and reverently of this awful life of ours. Clear your 
minds of the notion that anything is small which offers 
to you the alternative of being done in a right way or 
in a wrong; and recognise this as a fact—‘sand is 
weighty,’ trifles are of supreme importance. 

II. Now, secondly, let me ask you to take this saying 
as suggesting the overwhelming weight of small sins. 

That is only an application in one direction of the 
general principle that I have been trying to lay down; 
but it is one of such great importance that I wish to 
deal with it separately. And my point is this, that the 
accumulated pressure upon a man of a multitude of 
perfectly trivial faults and transgressions makes up a 
tremendous aggregate that weighs upon him with 
awful ponderousness. 

Let me remind you, to begin with, that, properly 
speaking, the words ‘great’ and ‘small’ should not be 





v. 3] THE WEIGHT OF SAND 283 


applied in reference to things about which ‘right’ or 
‘wrong’ are the proper words to employ. Or, to put it 
into plainer language, it is as absurd to talk about the 
‘size’ of a sin, as it is to take the superficial area of a 
picture as a test of its greatness. The magnitude of a 
transgression does not depend on the greatness of the 
act which transgresses—according to human standards 
—but on the intensity with which the sinful element is 
working in it. For acts make crimes, but motives 
make sins. If you take a bit of prussic acid, and bruise 
it down, every little microscopic fragment will have 
the poisonous principle in it; and it is very irrelevant 
to ask whether it is as big as a mountain or small as a 
grain of dust, it is poison all the same. So to talk 
about magnitude in regard to sins, is rather to intro- 
duce a foreign consideration. But still, recognising 
that there is a reality in the distinction that people 
make between great sins and small ones, though it is 
a superficial distinction, and does not go down to the 
bottom of things, let us deal with it now. 

I say, then, that small sins, by reason of their numer- 
ousness, have a terrible accumulative power. They are 
like the green flies on our rose-bushes, or the microbes 
that our medical friends talk so much about nowadays. 
Like them, their power of mischief does not in the least 
degree depend on their magnitude, and like them, 
they have a tremendous capacity of reproduction. It 
would be easier to find a man that had not done any one 
sin than to find out a man that had only done it once. 
And it would be easier to find a man that had done no 
evil than a man who had not been obliged to make the 
second edition of his sin an enlarged one. For this is 
the present Nemesis of all evil, that it requires repeti- 
tion, partly to still conscience, partly to satisfy excited 





284 THE PROVERBS [CH. XXVII. 


tastes and desires; so that animal indulgence in drink 
and the like is a type of what goes on in the inner life 
of every man, in so far as the second dose has to be 
stronger than the first in order to produce an equiva- 
lent effect ; and so on ad infinitum. 

And then remember that all our evil doings, however 
insignificant they may be, have a strange affinity with 
one another, so that you will find that to go wrong in 
one direction almost inevitably leads to a whole series 
of consequential transgressions of one sort or another. 
You remember the old story about the soldier that was 
smuggled into a fortress concealed in a hay cart, and 
opened the gates of a virgin citadel to his allies outside. 
Every evil thing, great or small, that we admit into 
our lives, still more into our hearts, is charged with the 
same errand as he had:—‘Set wide the door when you 
are inside, and let us all come in after you.’ ‘He taketh 
with him seven other spirits worse than himself, and 
they dwell there.’ ‘None of them, says one of the 
prophets, describing the doleful creatures that haunt 
the ruins of a deserted city, ‘shall by any means want 
its mate,’ and the satyrs of the islands and of the woods 
join together ! and hold high carnival in the city. And 
so, brethren! our little transgressions open the door for 
great ones, and every sin makes us more accessible to 
the assaults of every other. 

So let me remind you how here, in these little un- 
numbered acts of trivial transgression which scarcely 
produce any effect on conscience or on memory, but 
make up so large a portion of so many of our lives, lies 
one of the most powerful instruments for making us 
what we are. If we indulge in slight acts of trans- 
gression be sure of this, that we shall pass from them 
to far greater ones. For one man that leaps or falls all 





v. 3] THE WEIGHT OF SAND 285 


at once into sin which the world calls gross, there are 
a thousand that slide into it. The storm only blows 
down the trees whose hearts have been eaten out and 
their roots loosened. And when you see a man having 
a reputation for wisdom and honour all at once coming 
crash down and disclosing his baseness, be sure that he 
began with small deflections from the path of right. 
The evil works underground; and if we yield to little 
temptations, when great ones come we shall fall their 
victims. 

Let me remind you, too, that there is another sense 
in which ‘sand is weighty. You may as well be 
crushed under a sandhill as under a mountain of 
marble. It matters not which. The accumulated 
weight of the one is as great as that of the other. 
And I wish to lay upon the consciences of all that are 
listening to me now this thought, that an overwhelm- 
ing weight of guilt results from the accumulation of 
little sins. Dear friends! Ido not desire to preach a 
gospel of fear, but I cannot help feeling that, very 
largely, in this day, the ministration of the Christian 
Church is defective in that it does not give sufficient, 
though sad and sympathetic, prominence to the plain 
teaching of Christ and of the New Testament as to 
tuture retribution for present sin. We shall ‘every 
one of us give account of himself to God’; and if the 
account is long enough it will foot up to an enormous 
sum, though each item may be only halfpence. The 
weight of a lifetime of little sins will be enough to 
crush a man down with guilt and responsibility when 
he stands before that Judge. That is all true, and you 
know it, and I beseech you, take it to your hearts, 
‘Sand is weighty. Little sins have to be accounted 
for, and may crush. 





286 THE PROVERBS (cH. XXVIL. 


III. And now, lastly, let me ask you to consider one 
or two of the plain, practical issues of such thoughts 
as these. 

And, first, I would say that these considerations set 
in a very clear light the absolute necessity for all- 
round and ever-wakeful watchfulness over ourselves. 
A man in the tropics does not say, ‘Mosquitoes are 
so small that it does not matter if two or three of them 
get inside my bed-curtains. He takes care that not 
one is there before he lays himself down to sleep. 
There seems to be nothing more sad than the com- 
placent, easy-going way in which men allow themselves 
to keep their higher moral principles and their more 
rigid self-examination for the ‘great’ things, as they 
suppose, and let the little things often take care of 
themselves. What would you think of the captain of 
a steamer who in calm weather sailed by rule of thumb, 
only getting out his sextant when storms began to 
blow? And what about a man that lets the myriad 
trivialities that make up a day pass in and out of his 
heart as they will, and never arrests any of them at 
the gate with a ‘How camest thou in hither?’ ‘Look 
after the pence, and the pounds will look after them- 
selves. Look after your trivial acts, and, take my 
word for it, the great ones will be as they ought to be. 

Again, may not this thought somehow take down 
our easy-going and self-complacent estimate of our- 
selves? I have no doubt that there are a number of 
people in my audience just now who have been more 
or less consciously saying to themselves whilst I have 
been going on, ‘What have J to do with all this talk 
about sin, sin, sin? Iam a decent kind of a man. I 
do all the duties of my daily life, and nobody can say 
that the white of my eyes is black. I have done no 


v. 3] THE WEIGHT OF SAND 287 


great transgressions. What is it all about? It has 
nothing to do with me.’ 

Well, my friend! it has this to do with you—that in 
your life there are a whole host of things which only 
a very superficial estimate hinders you from recog- 
nising to be what they are—small deeds, but great sins. 
Is it a small thing to go, as some of you do go on from 
year to year, with your conduct and your thoughts 
and your loves and your desires utterly unaffected by 
the fact that there is a God in heaven, and that Jesus 
Christ died for you? Isthatasmallthing? It mani- 
fests itself in a great many insignificant actions. That 
I grant you; and you are a most respectable man, and 
you keep the commandments as well as youcan. But 
‘the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are 
all thy ways, hast thou not glorified.’ I say that that 
is not a small sin. 

So, dear brethren! I beseech you judge yourselves by 
this standard. I charge none of you with gross iniqui- 
ties. I know nothing about that. ButIdo appeal to 
you all, as I do to myself, whether we must not 
recognise the fact that an accumulated multitude of 
transgressions which are only superficially small, in 
their aggregate weigh upon us with ‘a weight heavy 
as frost, and deep almost as life.’ 

Last of all, this being the case, should we not all turn 
ourselves with lowly hearts, with recognition of our 
transgressions, acknowledging that whether it be five 
hundred or fifty pence that we owe, we have nothing 
to pay, and betake ourselves to Him who alone can 
deliver us from the habit and power of these small 
accumulated faults, and who alone can lift the burden 
of guilt and responsibility from off our shoulders? If 
you irrigate the sand it becomes fruitful soil. Christ 


288 THE PROVERBS (cH. XXXI. 


brings to us the river of the water of life; the inspiring, 
the quickening, the fructifying power of the new life 
that He bestows, and the sand may become soil, and 
the wilderness blossom as the rose. A heavy burden 
lies on our shoulders. Ah! yes! but‘ Behold the Lamb 
of God that beareth away the sins of the world!’ What 
was it that crushed Him down beneath the olives of 
Gethsemane? What was it that made Him ery, ‘My 
God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?’ I know no 
answer but one, for which the world’s gratitude is all 
too small. ‘The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of 
us all.’ 

‘Sand is weighty,’ but Christ has borne the burden. 
‘Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and it will drop from 
your emancipated shoulders, and they will henceforth 
bear only the light burden of His love. 


PORTRAIT OF A MATRON 


‘Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. 11. The 
heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of 
spoil. 12. She will do him good, and not evil, all the days of her life. 13. She 
seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. 14. She is like the 


merchants’ ships; she bringeth her food from afar. 15. She riseth also while it is 


yet night, and giveth meat to her household, anda portion to her maidens, 16. 
She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a 
vineyard. 17. She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms, 
18. Sne perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth not out by 
nigat. 19. She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. 
20. She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to 
the needy. 21. She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her house- 
hold are clothed with scarlet. 22. She maketh herself coverings of tapestry ; her 


clothing is silk and purple. 23. Her husband is known in the gates, when he - 


sitteth among the elders of the land. 24. She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; 
and delivereth girdles unto the merchant. 25. Strength and honour are her 
clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come. 26. She openeth her mouth with 
wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness. 27. She looketh well to the 
ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. 28. Her children 
arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. 29. Many 
daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all. 30. Favour is 
deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be 
praised. 31. Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her 
in the gates. —PROVERBS xxxi. 10-31. 


THis description of a good ‘house-mother’ attests the 





ant Dee & A, 





vs. 10-31] PORTRAIT OF A MATRON 289 


honourable position of woman in Israel. It would 
have been impossible in Eastern countries, where she 
was regarded only as a plaything and a better sort of 
slave. The picture is about equally far removed from 
old-world and from modern ideas of her place. This 
‘virtuous woman’ is neither a doll nor a graduate nor 
a public character. Her kingdom is the home. Her 
works ‘praise her in the gates’; but it is her husband, 
and not she, that ‘sits’ there among the elders. There 
is no sentiment or light of wedded love in the picture. 
It is neither the ideal woman nor wife that is painted, 
but the ideal head of a household, on whose manage- 
ment, as much as on her husband’s work, its well-being 
depends. 

There is plenty of room for modern ideals by the 
side of this old one, but they are very incomplete 
without it. If we take the ‘oracle which his mother 
taught’ King Lemuel to include this picture, the artist 
is a woman, and her motive may be to sketch the sort 
of wife her son should choose. In any case, it is 
significant that the book which began with the magni- 
ficent picture of Wisdom as a fair woman, and hung 
beside it the ugly likeness of Folly, should end with 
this charming portrait. It is an acrostic, and the 
fetters of alphabetic sequence are not favourable to 
progress or continuity of thought. 

But I venture to suggest a certain advance in the 
representation which removes the apparent disjointed 
character and needless repetition. There are, first, 
three verses forming a kind of prologue or intro- 
duction (vers. 10-12). Then follows the picture 
proper, which is brought into unity if we suppose 
that it describes the growing material success of the 
diligent housekeeper, beginning with her own willing 

a 





290 THE PROVERBS [on xxxn, 


work, and gradually extending till she and her family 
are well to do and among the magnates of her town 
(vers. 13-29). Then follow two verses of epilogue or 
conclusion (vers. 30, 31). 

The rendering ‘virtuous’ is unsatisfactory; for what 
is meant is not moral excellence, either in the wider 
sense or in the narrower to which, in reference to 
woman, that great word has been unfortunately 
narrowed. Our colloquialism ‘a woman of faculty’ 
would fairly convey the idea, which is that of ability 
and general capacity. We have said that there was 
no light of wedded love in the picture. That is true 
of the main body of it; but no deeper, terser ex- 
pression of the inmost blessedness of happy marriage 
was ever spoken than in the quiet words, ‘The heart 
of her husband trusteth in her, with the repose of 
satisfaction, with the tranquillity of perfect assurance. 
The bond uniting husband and wife in a true marriage 
is not unlike that uniting us with God. Happy are 
they who by their trust in one another and the 
peaceful joys which it brings are led to united trust 
in a yet deeper love, mirrored to them in their own! 
True, the picture here is mainly that of confidence 
that the wife is no squanderer of her husband’s goods, 
but the sweet thought goes far beyond the immediate 
application. So with the other general feature in 
verse 12, A true wife is a fountain of good, and good 
only, all: the days of her life—ay, and beyond them 
too, when her remembrance shines like the calm west 
after a cloudless sunset. This being, as it were, the 
overture, next. follows the main body of the piece. 

It starts with a description of diligence in a com- 
paratively humble sphere. Note that in verse 13 the 
woman is working alone. She toils ‘willingly,’ or, as 


vs.10-31] PORTRAIT OF A MATRON 291 


the literal rendering is, ‘with the pleasure of her 
hands.’ There is no profit in unwilling work. Love 
makes toil delightful, and delighted toil is successful. 
Throughout its pages the Bible reverences diligence. 
It is the condition of prosperity in material and 
spiritual things. Vainly do men and women try to 
dodge the law which makes the ‘sweat of the brow’ 
the indispensable requisite for ‘eating bread.’ When 
commerce becomes speculation, which is the polite 
name for gambling, which, again, is a synonym for 
stealing, it may yield much more dainty fare than 
bread to some for a time, but is sure to bring want 
sooner or later to individuals and communities. The 
foundation of this good woman’s fortune was that 
she worked with a will. There is no other founda- 
tion, either for fortune or any other good, or for self- 
respect, or for progress in knowledge or goodness or 
religion. 

Then her horizon widened, and she saw a way of in- 
creasing her store. ‘She is like the merchants’ ships; 
she bringeth her food from afar.’ She looks afield, and 
sees opportunities for profitable exchange. Promptly 
she avails herself of these, and is at work while it is 
yet dark. She has a household now, and does not 
neglect their comfort, any more than she does their 
employment. Their food and their tasks are both set 
them in the early morning, and their mistress is up 
as soon as they. Her toil brings in wealth, and so 
verse 16 shows another step in advance. ‘She con- 
sidereth a field, and buyeth it,’ and has made money 
enough to stock it with vines, and so add a new 
source of revenue, and acquire a new position as own- 
ing land. 

But prosperity does not make her relax her efforts 





292 THE PROVERBS (oH. XXxI. 


so we are told again in verses 17-19 of her abridging 
the hours of sleep, and toiling with wool and flax, 
which would be useless tautology if there were not 
some new circumstances to account for the repetition. 
Encouraged by success, she ‘girdeth her loins with 
strength,’ and, since she sees that ‘her merchandise is 
profitable,’ she is the more induced to labour. She 
still works with her own hands (ver. 19). But -the 
hands that are busy with distaff and spindle are also 
stretched out with alms in the open palm, and are 
extended in readiness to help the needy. A woman 
made unfeeling by wealth is a monster. Prosperity 
often leads men to niggardliness in charitable gifts; 
but if it does the same for a woman, it is doubly 
cursed. Pity and charity have their home in women’s 
hearts. If they are so busy holding the distaff or the 
pen that they become hard and insensible to the ery of 
misery, they have lost their glory. 

Then follow a series of verses describing how in- 
creased wealth brings good to her household and her- 
self. The advantages are of a purely material sort. 
Her children are ‘clothed with scarlet, which was not 
only the name of the dye, but of the stuff. Evidently 
thick material only was dyed of that hue, and so 
was fit for winter clothing, even if the weather was 
so severe for Palestine that snow fell. Her house 
was furnished with ‘carpets, or rather ‘cushions’ or 
‘pillows, which are more important pieces of furniture 
where people recline on divans than where they sit on 
chairs. Her own costume is that of a rich woman. 
‘Purple and fine linen’ are tokens of wealth, and she 
is woman enough to like to wear these. There is 
nothing unbecoming in assuming the style of living 
appropriate to one’s position. Her children and her- 


vs.10-31] PORTRAIT OF A MATRON 293, 


self thus share in the advantages of her industry; and 
the husband, who does not appear to have much busi- 
ness of his own, gets his share in that he sits among 
the wealthy and honoured inhabitants of the town, ‘in 
the gates, the chief place of meeting for business and 
gossip. 

Verse 24 recurs to the subject of the woman's 
diligence. She has got into a ‘shipping business,’ 
making for the export trade with the ‘merchants ’— 
literally, ‘Canaanites’ or Phoenicians, the great traders 
of the East, from whom, no doubt, she got the ‘ purple’ 
of her clothing in exchange for her manufacture. But 
she had a better dress than any woven in looms or 
bought with goods. ‘Strength and dignity’ clothe her. 
‘She laugheth at the time to come’; that is, she is able 
to look forward without dread of poverty, because 
she has realised a competent sum. Such looking for- 
ward may be like that of the rich man in the parable, 
a piece of presumption, but it may also be compatible 
with devout recognition of God’s providence. As in 
verse 20, beneficence was coupled with diligence, so in 
verse 26 gentler qualities are blended with strength 
and dignity, and calm anticipation of the future. 

A glimpse into ‘the very pulse’ of the woman’s 
nature is given. A true woman’s strength is always 
gentle, and her dignity attractive and gracious. Pro- 
sperity has not turned her head. ‘Wisdom,’ the 
heaven-descended virgin, the deep music of whose call 
we heard sounding in the earlier chapters of Proverbs, 
dwells with this very practical woman. The colloca- 
tion points the lesson that heavenly Wisdom has a 
field for its display in the common duties of a busy 
life, does not dwell in hermitages, or cloisters, or 
studies, but may guide and inspire a careful house- 





294 THE PROVERBS (CH. XXXI. 


keeper in her task of wisely keeping her husband's — 
goods together. The old legend of the descending 
deity who took service as a goat-herd, is true of the 
heavenly Wisdom, which will come and live in kitchens 
and shops. 

But the ideal woman has not only wisdom in act 
and word, but ‘the law of kindness is on her tongue.’ 
Prosperity should not rob her of her gracious de- 
meanour. Her words should be glowing with the 
calm flame of love which stoops to lowly and un- 
deserving objects. If wealth leads to presumptuous 
reckoning on the future, and because we have ‘much 
goods laid up for many years, we see no other use of 
leisure than to eat and drink and be merry, we fatally 
mistake our happiness and our duty. But if gentle 
compassion and helpfulness are on our lips and in our 
hearts and deeds, prosperity will be blessed. 

Nor does this ideal woman relax in her diligence, 
though she has prospered. Verse 27 seems very need- 
less repetition of what has been abundantly said 
already, unless we suppose, as before, new circum- 
stances to account for the reintroduction of a former 
characteristic. These are, as it seems to me, the in- 
creased wealth of the heroine, which might have led 
her to relax her watchfulness. ‘ Some slacking off 
might have been expected and excused; but at the 
end, as at the beginning, she looks after her house- 
hold and is herself diligent. The picture refers only 
to outward things. But we may remember that the 
same law applies to all, and that any good, either of 
worldly wealth or of intellectual, moral, or religious 
kind, is only preserved by the continuous exercise of 
the same energies which won it at first. 

Verses 28 and 29 give the eulogium pronounced by 


vs.10-31] PORTRAIT OF A MATRON 295 


children and husband. The former ‘rise up’ as in 
reverence; the latter declares her superiority to all 
women, with the hyperbolical language natural to 
love. Happy the man who, after long years of wedded 
life, can repeat the estimate of his early love with the 
calm certitude born of experience! 

The epilogue in verses 30 and 31 is not the continua- 
tion of the husband’s speech. It at once points the 
lesson from the whole picture for King Lemuel, and 
unveils the root of the excellences described. Beauty 
is skin deep. Let young men look deeper than a fair 
face. Let young women seek for that beauty which 
does not fade. The fear of the Lord lies at the bottom 
of all goodness that will last through the tear and 
wear of wedded life, and of all domestic diligence 
which is not mere sordid selfishness or slavish toil. 
The narrow arena of domestic life affords a fit theatre 
for the exercise of the highest gifts and graces; and 
the woman who has made a home bright, and has won 
and kept a husband’s love and children’s reverence, 
may let who will grasp at the more conspicuous prizes 
which women are so eager after nowadays. She has 
chosen the better part, which shall not be taken from 
her. She shall receive ‘of the fruit of her hands’ 
both now and hereafter, if the fear of the Lord has 
been the root from which that fruit has grown; and 
‘her works shall praise her in the gate, though she sits 
quietly in her home. It is well when our deeds are the 
trumpeters of our fame, and when to tell them is to 
praise us. 

The whole passage is the hallowing of domestic life, 
a directory for wives and mothers, a beautiful ideal 
of how noble a thing a busy mother’s life may be, an 
exhibition to young men of what they should seek, and 


296 THE PROVERBS (cH. XxxI. 


of young women of what they should aim at. It were 
well for the next generation if the young women of 
this one were as solicitous to make cages as nets, to 
cultivate qualities which would keep love in the home 
as to cultivate attractions which lure him to their feet. 


ECCLESIASTES; or, THE PREACHER 


WHAT PASSES AND WHAT ABIDES 


‘One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth 
abideth for ever.’—Ecc es. i. 4. 


* And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will 

of God abideth for ever.’—1 JOHN ii. 17. 
A GREAT river may run through more than one king- 
dom, and bear more than one name, but its flow is 
unbroken. The river of time runs continuously, taking 
no heed of dates and calendars. The importance that 
we attach to the beginnings or endings of years and 
centuries is a sentimental illusion, but even an illusion 
that rouses us to a consciousness of the stealthy gliding 
of the river may do us good, and we need all the helps 
we can find to wise retrospect and sober anticipation. 
So we must let the season colour our thoughts, even 
whilst we feel that in yielding to that impulse we are 
imagining what has no reality in the passing from the 
last day of one century to the first day of another. 

Ido not mean to discuss in this sermon either the 
old century or the new in their wider social and other 
aspects. That has been done abundantly. We shall 
best do our parts in making the days, and the years, 
and the century what they should be, if we let the 
truths that come from these combined texts sink into 
and influence our individual lives. I have put them 


together, because they are so strikingly antithetical, 
297 





298 ECCLESIASTES (cH. 1. 


both true, and yet looking at the same facts from 
opposite points of view. But the antithesis is not really 
so complete as it sounds at first hearing, because what 
the Preacher means by ‘the earth’ that ‘abideth for 
ever’ is not quite the same as what the Apostle means 
by the ‘ world’ that ‘ passes,’ and the ‘ generations’ that 
come and go are not exactly the same as the men that 
‘abide for ever. But still the antithesis is real and 
impressive. The bitter melancholy of the Preacher 
saw but the surface; the joyous faith of the Apostle 
went a great deal deeper, and putting the two sets of 
thoughts and ways of looking at man and his dwelling- 
place together, we get lessons that may well shape our 
individual lives. 

So let me ask you to look, in the first place, at— 

I. The sad and superficial teaching of the Preacher. 

Now in reading this Book of Ecclesiastes—which I 
am afraid a great many people do not read at all—we 
have always to remember that the wild things and the 
bitter things which the Preacher is saying so abun- 
dantly through its course do not represent his ultimate 
convictions, but thoughts that he took up in his progress 
from error to truth. His first word is: ‘All is vanity!’ 
That conviction had been set vibrating in his heart, as 
it is set vibrating in the heart of every man who does 
as he did, viz., seeks for solid good away from God. 
That is his starting-point. It is not true. All is not 
vanity, except to some blasé cynic, made cynical by the 
failure of his voluptuousness, and to whom ‘all things 
here are out of joint, and everything looks yellow 
because his own biliary system is out of order. That is 
the beginning of the book, and there are hosts of other 
things in the course of it as one-sided, as cynically 
bitter, and therefore superficial. But the end of itis: 





v.4] WHAT PASSES: WHAT ABIDES 299 


‘Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter; fear 
God, and keep His commandments: for this is the 
whole duty of man.’ In his journey from the one 
point to the other my text is the first step, ‘One 
generation goeth, and another cometh: the earth 
abideth for ever.’ 

He looks out upon humanity, and sees that in one 
aspect the world is full of births, and in another full of 
deaths. Coffins and cradles seem the main furniture, 
and he hears the tramp, tramp, tramp of the genera- 
tions passing over a soil honeycombed with tombs, and 
therefore ringing hollow to their tread. All depends 
on the point of view. The strange history of humanity 
is like a piece of shot silk; hold it at one angle, and 
you see dark purple, hold at another, and you see bright 
golden tints. Look from one point of view, and it 
seems along history of vanishing generations. Look to 
the rear of the procession, and it seems a buoyant 
spectacle of eager, young faces pressing forwards on 
the march, and of strong feet treading the new road. 
But yet the total effect of that endless procession is to ° 
impress on the observer the transiency of humanity. . 
And that wholesome thought is made more poignant 
still by the comparison which the writer here draws 
between the fleeting generations and the abiding earth. 
Man is the lord of earth, and can mould it to his pur- 
pose, but it remains and he passes. He is but a lodger 
in an old house that has had generations of tenants, 
each of whom has said for a while, ‘It is mine’; and 
they all have drifted away, and the house stands. The 
Alps, over which Hannibal stormed, over which the 
Goths poured down on the fertile plains of Lombardy, 
through whose passes medizeval emperors led their 
. forces, over whose summits Napoleon brought his men, 





300 ECCLESIASTES (CH. I. 
through whose bowels this generation has burrowed 
its tunnels, stand the same, and smile the same amid 
their snows, at the transient creatures that have 
crawled across them. The primrose on the rock 
blooms in the same place year after year, and nature 
and it are faithful to their covenant, but the poet's eyes 
that fell upon them are sealed with dust. Generations 
~ have gone, the transient flower remains. ‘One genera- 
tion cometh and another goeth,’ and the tragedy is 
made more tragical because the stage stands unaltered, 
and ‘the earth abides for ever.’ That is what sense has 
to say—‘ the foolish senses’—and that is all that sense 
has tosay. Is it all that can be said? If it is, then the 
Preacher's bitter conclusion is true, and ‘all is vanity 
and chasing after wind.’ 

He immediately proceeds to draw from this undeni- 
able, but, as I maintain, partial fact, the broad con- 
clusion which cannot be rebutted, if you accept what 
he has said in my text as being the sufficient and com- 
plete account of man and his dwelling-place. If, says 
he, it is true that one generation comes and another 
goes, and the earth abides for ever, and if that is all - 
that has to be said, then all things are full of labour. 
There is immense activity, and there is no progress; 
it is all rotary motion round and round and round, and 
the same objects reappear duly and punctually as the 
wheel revolves, and life is futile. Yes; so itis unless 
there is something more to be said, and the life that is 
thus futile is also, as it seems to me, inexplicable if you 
believe in God at all. If man, being what he is, is 
wholly subject to that law of mutation and decay, then 
not only is he made ‘a little lower than the angels for 
the suffering of death,’ but he is also inferior to that 
persistent, old mother-earth from whose bosom he has 





v4) WHAT PASSES: WHAT ABIDES 301 


come. If all that you have to say of him is, ‘ Dust thou 
art, and unto dust shalt thou return,’ then life is futile, 
‘and God is not vindicated for having produced it. 

And there is another consequence that follows, if 
this is all that we have got to say. If the cynical 
wisdom of Ecclesiastes is the ultimate word, then I do 
not assert that morality is destroyed, because right and 
wrong are not dependent either upon the belief in 
a God, or on the belief in immortality. But I do say-. 
that to declare that the fleeting, transient life of earth 
is all does strike a staggering blow at all noble ethics 
and paralyses a great deal of the highest forms of 
human activity, and that, as has historically been the 
case, so on the large scale, and, speaking generally, 
it will be the case, that the man whose creed is only 
‘To-morrow we die’ will very speedily draw the con- - 
clusion, ‘Let us eat and drink,’ and sensuous delights 
and the lower side of his nature will become dominant. 

So, then, the Preacher had not got at the bottom of 
all things, either in his initial conviction that all was 
vanity, or in that which he laid down as the first step 
towards establishing that, that man passes and the 
earth abides. There is more to be said; the sad, 
superficial teaching of the Preacher needs to be supple- 
mented. 

Now turn for a moment to what does supplement it. 

II. The joyous and profounder teaching of the 
Apostle. 

The cynic never sees the depths; that is reserved for 
the mystical eye of the lover. So John says: ‘No, no; 
that is not all. Here is the true state of affairs: “The 
world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that 
doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”’ The doctrine 
of the passing generations and the abiding earth is 





302 ECCLESIASTES 


fronted squarely in my second text by the not contra- 
dictory, but complementary doctrine of the passing 
world and the abiding men. I do not suppose that 
John had this verse of Ecclesiastes in his mind, for the 
word ‘abide’ is one of his favourite expressions, and is 
always cropping up. But even though he had not, we 
find in his utterance the necessary correction to the 
first text. As I have said, and now need not do more 
than repeat in a sentence, the antithesis is not so com- 
plete as it seems. John’s ‘world’ is not the Preacher's 
‘earth, but he means thereby, as we all know, the 
aggregate of created things, including men, considered 
apart from God, and in so far as it includes voluntary 
agents set in opposition to God and the will of God. 
He means the earth rent away from God, and turned 
to be what it was not meant to be, a minister of evil, 
and he means men, in so far as they have parted them- 
selves from God and make up an alien, if not a 
positively antagonistic company. 

Perhaps he was referring, in the words of our text, to 
the break-up of the existing order of things which he 
discerned as impending and already begun to take 
effect in consequence of the coming of Jesus Christ, 
the shining of the true Light. For you may remember 
that in a previous part of the epistle he uses precisely 
the same expression, with a significant variation. Here, 
in our text, he says, ‘The world passeth away’; there 
he says, ‘The darkness has passed and the true light 
now shineth.’ He sees a'process installed and going on, 
in which the whole solid-seeming fabric of a godless 
society is being dissolved and melted away. And says 
he, in the midst of all this change there is one who 
stands unchanged, the man that does God’s will. 

But just for a moment we may take the lower point 


v.4) WHAT PASSES: WHAT ABIDES 303 


of view, and see here a flat contradiction of the 
Preacher. He said, ‘Men go, and the world abides.’ 
‘No, says John; ‘your own psalmists might have 
taught you better: “Asa vesture shalt Thou change 
them, and they shall be changed.”’ The world, the 
earth, which seems so solid and permanent, is all the 
while in perpetual flux, as our later science has taught 
us, in a sense of which neither Preacher nor Apostle 
could dream. For just as from the beginning forces 
were at work which out of the fire-mist shaped sun 
and planets, so the same forces, continuing in opera- 
tion, are tending towards the end of the system which 
they began; and a contracting sun and a diminished 
light and a lowered temperature and the narrower 
orbits in which the planets shall revolve, prophesy 
that ‘the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and 
that all things which have been made must one day 
cease to be. Nature is the true Penelope’s web, ever 
being woven and ever being unravelled, and in the 
most purely physical and scientific sense the world is 
passing away. But then, because you and I belong, in 
a segment of our being, to that which thus is passing 
away, we come under the same laws, and all that has 
been born must die. So the generations come, and in 
their very coming bear the prophecy of their going. 
But, on the other hand, there is an inner nucleus of our 
being, of which the material is but the transient 
envelope and periphery, which holds nought of the 
material, but of the spiritual, and that ‘abides for 
ever.’ 

But let us lift the thought rather into the region of 
the true antithesis which John was contemplating, 
which is not so much the crumbling away of the 
material, and the endurance of the spiritual, as the 





304 ECCLESIASTES 


essential transiency of everything that is antagonism 
to the will of God, and the essential eternity of every- 
thing which is in conformity with that will. And so, 
says he,‘ The world is passing, and the lust thereof.’ 
The desires that grasp it perish with it, or perhaps, 
more truly still, the object of the desire perishes, and 
with it the possibility of their gratification ceases, but 
the desire itself remains. But what of the man whose 
life has been devoted to the things seen and temporal, 
when he finds himself in a condition of being where 
none of these have accompanied him? Nothing to 
slake his lusts, if he be'a sensualist. No money-bags, 
ledgers, or cheque-books if he be a plutocrat or a 
capitalist ora miser. No books or dictionaries if he be 
a mere student. Nothing of his vocations if he lived 
for ‘the world.’ But yet the appetite is abiding. Will 
that not be a thirst that cannot be slaked ? 

‘The world is passing and the lust thereof,’ and all 
that is antagonistic to God, or separated from Him, is 
essentially as ‘a vapour that appeareth for a little 
time, and then vanishes away, whereas the man who 
does the will of God abideth for ever, in that he is 
steadfast in the midst of change. 


‘His hand the good man fastens on the skies, 
And lets earth roll, nor heeds its idle whirl.’ 


He shall ‘abide for ever,’ in the sense that his work is 
perpetual. In one very deep and solemn sense, nothing 
human ever dies, but in another all that is not running 
in the same direction as, and borne along by the 
impulse of, the will of God, is destined to be neutralised 
and brought to nothing at last. There may be a row of 
figures as long as to reach from here to the fixed stars, 
but if there is not in front of them the significant digit, 


(oH. 1. 


v.4) WHAT PASSES: WHAT ABIDES. 305 


which comes from obedience to the will of God, all is 
but a string of ciphers, and their net result is nothing. 
And he ‘abideth for ever,’ in the most blessed and pro- 
found sense, in that through his faith, which has kindled 
his love, and his love which has set in motion his 
practical obedience, he becomes participant of the very 
eternity of the living God. ‘This is eternal life,’ not 
merely to know, but ‘to do the will’ of our Father. 
Nothing else will last, and nothing else will prosper, 
any more than a bit of driftwood can stem Niagara. 
Unite yourself with the will of God, and you abide. 

And now let me, as briefly as I can, throw together— 

III. The plain, practical lessons that come from both 
these texts. 

May I say, without seeming to be morbid or un- 
practical, one lesson is that we should cultivate a sense 
of the transiency of this outward life? One of our old 
authors says somewhere, that it is wholesome to smell 
at a piece of turf from a churchyard. I know that 
much harm has been done by representing Christianity" 
as mainly a scheme which is to secure man a peaceful 
death, and that many morbid forms of piety have given | 
far too large a place to the contemplation of skulls and 
cross-bones. But for all that, the remembrance of 
death present in our lives will often lay a cool hand 
upon a throbbing brow; and, like a bit of ice used by a 
skilful physician, will bring down the temperature, and 
stay the too tumultuous beating of the heart. ‘So 
teach us to number our days that we may apply our 
hearts to wisdom. It will minister energy, and lead us 
to say, like our Lord, ‘We must work the works of Him 
that sent Me while it is day; the night cometh.’ 

Let me say again—a very plain, practical lesson is to 
dig deep down for our foundations below the rubbish 

U 


306 ECCLESIASTES 


that has accumulated. If a man wishes to build a 
house in Rome or in Jerusalem he has to go fifty or 
sixty feet down, through potsherds and broken tiles 
and triturated marbles, and the dust of ancient palaces 


and temples. We have to drive a shaft clear down. 


through all the superficial strata, and to lay the first 
stones on the Rock of Ages. Do not build on that 
which quivers and shakes beneath you. Do not try to 
make your life’s path across the weeds, or as they call 
it in Egypt, the ‘ sudd,’ that floats on the surface of the 
Nile, compacted for many a mile, and yet only a film 
on the surface of the river, to be swept away some day. 


~» Build on God. 


And the last lesson is, let us see to it that our wills 
are in harmony with His, and the work of our hands 
His work. We can do that will in all the secularities of 
our daily life. The difference between the work that 
shrivels up and disappears and the work that abides 
is not so much in its external character, or in the 
materials on which it is expended, as in the motive 
from, which it comes. So that, if I might so say, if two 
women are sitting at the same millstone face to face, 
and turning round the same handle, one of them for 
one half the cireumference, and the other for the other, 
and grinding out the same corn, the one’s work may be 
‘gold, silver, precious stones,’ which shall abide the 
trying fire ; and the other’s may be ‘ wood, hay, stubble,’ 
which shall be burnt up. ‘He that doeth the will of 
God abideth for ever.’ ' 

- So let us set ourselves, dear friends! to our several 
tasks for this coming year. Never mind about the 
century, it will take care of itself. Do your little work 
in ‘your little corner, and be sure of this, that amidst 
changes you will stand unchanged, amidst tumults you 





v.4] THE PAST AND THE FUTURE 307 


may stand calm, in death you will be entering on a 
fuller life, and that what to others is the end will be 
to you the beginning. ‘If any man’s work abide, he 
shall receive a reward, and he himself shall abide with 
the abiding God. 

The bitter cynic said half the truth when he said, 
‘One generation goeth, and another cometh; but the 
earth abides. The mystic Apostle saw the truth 
steadily, and saw it whole when he said, ‘ Lo! the world 
passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth 
the will of God abideth for ever.’ 


THE PAST AND THE FUTURE 


“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is 
that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.’—Eccxss. i. 9. 


‘That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of 
men, but to the will of God. 3. For the time past of our life may suffice us to 
have wrought the will of the Gentiles.’—1 PETER iv. 2; 3. 


Ir you will look at these two passages carefully you 
will, I think, see that they imply two different, and in 
some respects contradictory, thoughts about the future 
in its relation to the past. The first of them is the 
somewhat exaggerated utterance of a dreary and 
depressing philosophy, which tells us that, as in the 
outer world, so in regard to man’s life, there is an 
enormous activity and no advance, that it is all moving 
round like the scenes in some circular panorama, that 
after it has gone the round back it comes again, that it 
is the same thing over and over again, that life is a 
treadmill, so to speak, with an immense deal of working 
of muscles; but it all comes to nothing over again. ‘The 
rivers run into the sea and the sea is not full, and where 
the rivers come from they go back to; and the wind 
goes to the south, turns to the north, and whirls about 


308 ECCLESIASTES 


continually. Everything is full of labour, and it has 
all been done before, and there is nothing fresh ; every- 
thing is flat, stale, and unprofitable.’ 

Well that is not true altogether, but though it be not 
true altogether—though it be an exaggeration, and 
though the inference that is built upon it is not 
altogether satisfactory and profound—yet the thought 
itself is one that has a great deal in it that is true and 
important, and may be very helpful and profitable to 
us now; for there is a religious way, as well as 
an irreligious way, of saying there is nothing new 
under the sun. It may be the utterance of a material, 
blasé, unprofitable, spurious philosophy, or it may be 
the utterance of the profoundest, and the happiest, and 
the most peaceful religious trust and confidence. 

The other passage implies the opposite notion of 
man’s life, that however much in my future may be just 
the same as what my past has been, there is a region 
in which it is quite possible to make to-morrow unlike 
to-day, and so to resolve and so to work as that ‘the 
time past of our lives’ may be different from ‘the rest 
of our time in the flesh’; that a great revolution may 
come upon a man, and that whilst the outward life is 
continuous and the same, and the tasks to be done are 
the same, and the joys the same, there may be such 
a profound and radical difference in the spirit and 
motive in which they are done as that the thing that 
has been is not that which shall be, and for us there 
may be a new thing under the sun. 

And so just now I think we may take these two 
passages in their connection—their opposition, and in 
their parallelism—as suggesting to us two very helpful, 
mutually completing thoughts about the unknown 
future that stretches before us—first, the substantial 





v.9] THE PAST AND THE FUTURE = 309 


identity of the future with the past; second, the 
possible total unlikeness of the future and the past. 
First then, let us ‘try to get the impress from the 
first phrase of that conviction, so far as it is true, as to 
the sameness of the things that are going to be with 
the things that have been. The immediate connection 
in which the words are spoken is in regard, mainly, to 
the outer world, the physical universe, and only 
secondarily and subordinately in regard to man’s life. 
And I need not remind you how that thought of the 
absolute sameness and continuous repetition of the 
past and the future has gained by the advance of 
physical science in modern times. It seems to be 
contradicted no doubt by the continual emergence of 
new things here and there, but they tell us that the 
novelty is only a matter of arrangement, that the 
atoms have never had an addition to them since the 
beginning of things, that all stand just as they were 
from the very commencement and foundation of all 
things, and that all that seems new is only a new 
arrangement, so that the thing which has been is that 
which shall be. And then there comes up the other 
thought, upon which I need not dwell for a moment, 
that the present condition of things round about us is 
the result of the uniform forces that have been working 
straight on from the very beginning. And yet, whilst 
all that is quite true, we come to our own human lives, 
and we find there the true application of such words as 
these: to-morrow is to be like yesterday. There is one 
very important sense in which the opposite of that is 
true, and no to-morrow can ever be like any yesterday 
for however much the events may be the same, we are 
so different that, in regard even to the most well 
trodden and beaten of our paths of daily life, we may 


310 ECCLESIASTES 


all say, ‘We have not passed this way before!” We 
cannot bring back that which is gone—that which is 
gone is gone for good or evil, irrevocable as the snow 
or the perfume of last year’s flowers. I dare say there 
are many here before me who are saying to them- 
selves, ‘No! life can never again be what life has been 
for me, and the only thing that I am quite sure about 
in regard to to-morrow is that it is utterly impossible 
that it should ever be as yesterday was!’ Notwith- 
standing, the word of my text is a true word, the thing 
that hath been is that which shall be. I need not dwell 
on the grounds upon which the certainty rests, such, 
for instance, as that the powers which shape to-morrow 
are the same as the powers which shaped yesterday; 
that you and I, in our nature, are the same, and that 
the mighty Hand up there that is moulding it is the 
same; that every to-morrow is the child of all the yes- 
terdays; that the same general impression will pervade 
the future as has pervaded the past. Though events 


may be different the general stamp and characteristics 


of them will be the same, and when we pass into a new 
region of human life we shall find that we are not 
walking in a place where no footprints have been 
before us, but that all about us the ground is trodden 
down smooth. 

‘That which hath been is that which shall be.’ Thus, 
while this is proximately true in regard to the future, 
let me just for a moment or two give you one or two of 
the plain, simple pieces of well-worn wisdom which are 
built upon such a thought. And first of all let me give 
you this, ‘Well, then, let us learn to tone down our 
expectations of what may be coming to us.’ Especially 


I speak now to the younger portion of my congregation, 


to whom life is beginning, and to whom it is naturally 





é 





v.9}] THE PAST AND THE FUTURE 311 


tinted with roseate hue, and who have a great deal 
stretching before them which is new to them, new 
duties, new relationships, new joys. But whilst that is 
specially true for them it is true for all. Itis a strange 
illusion under which we all live to the very end of our 
lives, unless by reflection and effort we become masters 
of it and see things in the plain daylight of common 
sense, that the future is going somehow or other to be 
brighter, better, fuller of resources, fuller of blessings, 
freer from sorrow than the past has been. We turn 
over each new leaf that marks a new year, and we 
cannot help thinking: ‘ Well! perhaps hidden away in 
its storehouses there may be something brighter and 
better in store for me. It is well, perhaps, that we 
should have that thought, for if we were not so drawn 
on, even though it be by an illusion, I do not know that 
we should be able to live on as we do. But don’t let us 
forget in the hours of quiet that there is no reason at 
all to expect that any of these arbitrary, and conven- 
tional, and unreal distinctions of calendars and dates 
make any difference in that uniform strand of our life 
which just runs the same, which is reeled off the great 
drum of the future and on to the great drum of the 
past, and that is all spun out of one fibre and is one 
gauge, and one sort of stuff from the beginnifig to the 
end. And so let us be contented where we are, and not 
fancy that when I get that thing that I am looking 
forward to, when I get into that position I am waiting 
for, things will be much different from what they are 
to-day. Life is all one piece, the future and the past, 
the pattern runs right through from the beginning to 
the end, and the stuff is the same stuff. So don’t you 
be too enthusiastic, you people who have an eager 
ambition for social and political advancement. Things 





312 ECCLESIASTES om. 1 


will be very much as they are used to be, with perhaps 
some slow, gradual, infinitesimal approximation to a 
higher ideal and a nobler standard; but there will be 
no jump, no breaks, no spasmodic advance. We must 
be contented to accept the law, that there is no new 
thing under the sun. As you would lay a piece of 
healing ice upon the heated forehead, lay that law upon 
the feverish anticipations some of you have in regard 
to the future, and let the heart beat more quietly, and 
with the more contentment for the recognition of that 
law. 

And then I may say, at the same time, though I 
won't dwell upon it for more than a moment, let us 
take the same thought to teach us to moderate our 
fears. Don’t be afraid that anything whatever may 
come that will destroy the substantial likeness between 
the past and the future; and so leave all those jarring 
and terrifying thoughts that mingle with all our 
anticipations of the time to come, leave them very 
quietly on one side and say, ‘ Thou hast been my Help, 
leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salva- 
tion.’ 

And then there are one or two other points I mean 
to touch upon, and let me just name them. Do not let 
us so exaggerate that thought of the substantial same- 
ness of the future and the past as to flatten life and 
make it dreary and profitless and insignificant. Let us 
rather feel, as I shall have to say presently, that whilst 
the framework remains the same, whilst the general 
characteristics will not be much different, there is room 
within that uniformity for all possible play of variety 
and interest, and earnestness and enthusiasm, and hope. 
They make the worst possible use of this fixity and 
eteadfastness of things who say, as the dreary man at 


v.9] THE PAST AND THE FUTURE 313 


the beginning of the Book of Ecclesiastes is represented 
as saying, that because things are the same as they will 
and have been, all is vanity. Itisnottrue. Don’t let 
the uniformity of life flatten your interest in the great 
miracle of every fresh day, with its fresh continuation 
of ancient blessings and the steadfast mercies of our 
Lord. 

And let us hold firmly to the far deeper truth that 
the future will be the same as the past, because God is 
the same. God’s yesterday is God’s to-morrow—the 
same love, the same resources, the same wisdom, the 
same power, the same sustaining Hand, the same 
encompassing Presence. ‘A thousand years are as one 
day, and one day as a thousand years’; and when we 
say there is no new thing under the sun let us feel that 
the deepest way of expressing that thought is, ‘Thou 
art the same, and Thy steadfast purposes know no 
alteration.’ 

Turn to the other side of the thought suggested by 
the second passage of the text. It speaks to us, as I 
have said, of the possible entire unlikeness between 
the future and the past. To-morrow is the child of 
yesterday—granted ; ‘whatsoever a man soweth, that 
shall he reap’—certainly; thereis a persistent uniformity 
of nature, and the same causes working make the 
future much of the same general structure as all the 
past has been—be it so; and yet within the limits of 
that identity there may be breathed into the self- 
sameness of to-morrow such an entire difference of 
disposition, temper, motive, direction of life, that my 
whole life may be revolutionised, my whole being, I 
was going to say, cleft in twain, my old life buried and 
forgotten, and a new life may emerge from chaos and 
from the dead, Of course, the question, Is such an 





314 ECCLESIASTES (ont 


alteration possible? rises up very solemnly to men, to 
most of them, for I suppose we all of us know what it 
is to have been beaten time after time in the attempt 
to shake off the dominion of some habit or evil, and to 
alter the bearing and the direction of the whole life, 
and we have to say, ‘It is no good trying any longer 
my life must run on in the channel which I have carved 
for it; I have made my bed and I must lie on it; I 
cannot get rid of these things.’ And, no doubt, in 
certain aspects, change isimpossible. There are certain 
limitations of natural disposition which I never can 
overcome. For instance; if I have no musical ear I ~ 
cannot turn myself into a musician. If I have no 
mathematical faculty it is no good poring over Euclid, 
for, with the best intentions in the world, I shall make 
nothing of it. We must work within the limits of our 
natural disposition, and cut our coat according to our 
cloth. In that respect to-morrow will be as yesterday, 
and there cannot be any change. And it is quite true 
that character, which is the great precipitate from the 
waters of conduct, gets rocky, that habits become 
persistent, and man’s will gets feeble by long indulgence 
in any course of life. But for all that, admitting to 
the full all that, I am here now to say to every 
man and woman in this place, ‘Friend, you may make 
your life from this moment so unlike the blotted, 
stained, faultful, imperfect, sinful past that no words 
other than the words of the New Testament will be 
large enough to express the fact. “If any man be in 
Christ he is a new creature, old things are passed 
away.”’ For we all know how into any life the coming 
of some large conviction not believed in or perceived 
before, may alter the whole bias, current, and direction 
of it; how into any life the coming of a new love not — 





v.9} THE PAST AND THE FUTURE 315 


cherished and entertained before, may ennoble and 
transfigure the whole of its nature; how into any life 
the coming of new motives, not yielded to and recog- 
nised before, may make all things new and different. 
These three plain principles, the power of conviction, 
the power of affection, the power of motive, are broad 
enough to admit of building upon them this great and 
helpful and hopeful promise to us all—‘ The time past 
of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of 
the Gentiles,’ that ‘henceforth we may live the rest of 
our time in the flesh according to the will of God.’ 

To you who have been living in the past with little 
regard to the supreme powers and principles of Christ's 
love and God’s Gospel in Him, I bring the offer of 
a radical revolution; and I tell you that if you like 
- you may this day begin a life which, though it shall 
be like yesterday in outward things, in the continuity 
of some habits, in the continuance of character, shall 
be all under the influence of an entirely new, and 
innovating, and renovating power. I ask you whether 
you don’t think that you have had enough, to use the 
language of my text, in the part of obeying the will of 
the flesh; and I beseech you that you will let these great 
principles, these grand convictions which cluster round 
and explain the cross of Jesus Christ, influence your 
mind, character, habits, desires, thoughts, actions; that 
you will yield yourself to the new power of the Spirit 
of life in Christ, which is granted to us if only we 
submit ourselves to it and humbly desire it. And to 
‘you who have in some measure lived by this mighty 
influence I come with the message for you and for 
myself that the time to come may, if we will, be filled 
very much fuller than it is; ‘To-morrow may be as this 
day, and much more abundant.’ I believe in a patient, 





316 ECCLESIASTES [ou. I. 


reflecting, abundant examination of the past. The old 
proverb says that ‘Every man by the time he is forty is 
either a fool or a physician’; and any man or woman 
by the time they get ten years short of that age, ought 
to know where they are weakest, and ought to be able 
to guard against the weak places in their character. I 
do not believe in self-examination for the purpose of 
finding in a man’s own character reasons for answering 
the question, ‘Am I a Christian?’ But I do believe 
that no people will avail themselves fully of the power 
God has given them for making the future brighter 
and better than the past who have not a very clear, 
accurate, comprehensive, and penetrating knowledge 
of their faults and their failures in the past. I suppose 
if the Tay Bridge is to be built again, it won’t be built 
of the same pattern as that which was blown into the 
water last week; and you and I ought to learn by 
experience the places in our souls that give in the 
tempests, where there is most need for strengthening 
the bulwarks and defending our natures. And so I 
say, begin with the abundant recognition of the past, 
and then a brave confidence in the possibilities of the 
future. Let us put ourselves under that great renovat- 
ing Power which is conviction and affection and motive 
all in one. ‘He loved me and gave Himself for me.’ 
And so while we front the future we can feel that, 
God being in us, and Christ being in us, we shall make 
it a far brighter and fairer thing than the blurred and 
blotted past which to-day is buried, and life may go on 
with grand blessedness and power until we shall hear 
the great voice from the Throne say, ‘There shall be no 
more death, no more sorrow, no more crying, no more 
pain, for the former things are passed away,’ ‘ Behold! 
I make all things new,’ 


TWO VIEWS OF LIFE 


‘This sore travail hath God given to the sons of man, to be exercised therewith. 
—ECCLEs. i. 13. 


‘He for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness.’— 
HEBREWS xii. 10. 

THESE two texts set before us human life as it looks to 
two observers. The former admits that God shapes it; 
but to him it seems sore travail, the expenditure of 
much trouble and efforts; the results of which seem to 
be nothing beyond profitless exercise. There is an 
immense activity and nothing to show for it at the 
end but wearied limbs. The other observer sees, at 
least, as much of sorrow and trouble as the former, 
but he believes in the ‘Father of spirits, and in a 
hereafter; and these, of course, bring a meaning and a 
wider purpose into the ‘sore travail, and make it, not 
futile but, profitable to our highest good. 

I. Note first the Preacher’s gloomy half-truth. 

The word rendered in our text ‘travail’ is a favourite 
one with the writer. It means occupation which costs 
effort and causes trouble. The phrase ‘to be exercised 
therewith, rather means to fatigue themselves, so that 
life as looked upon by the Preacher consists of effort 
without result but weariness. 

If he knew it at all, it was very imperfectly and 
dimly; and whatever may be thought of teaching on 
that subject which appears in the formal conclusion of 
the book, the belief in a future state certainly exercises 
no influence on its earlier portions. These represent 
phases through which the writer passes on his way to 
his conclusion. He does believe in ‘God,’ but, very 
significantly, he never uses the sacred name ‘Lord.’ He 


‘has shaken himself free, or he wishes to represent a 
317 





318 ECCLESIASTES 


character who has shaken himself free from Revela- 
tion, and is fighting the problem of life, its meaning 
and worth, without any help from Law, or Prophet, or 
Psalm. He does retain belief in what he calls ‘God,’ 
but his pure Theism, with little, if any, faith in a future 
life, is a creed which has no power of unravelling the 
perplexed mysteries of life, and of answering the 
question, ‘What does it all mean?’ With keen and — 
cynical vision he looks out not only over men, as in 
this first chapter, but over nature; and what mainly 
strikes him is the enormous amount of work that is 
being done, and the tragical poverty of its results. 
The question with which he begins his book is, ‘ What 
profit hath a man of all his labour wherein he laboureth’ 
under the sun?’ And for answer he looks at the sun 
rising and going down, and being in the same place 
after its journey through the heavens; and he hears 
the wind continually howling and yet returning again 
to its circuits; and the waters now running as rivers 
into the sea and again drawn up in vapours, and once 
more falling in rain and running as waters. This 
wearisome monotony of intense activity in nature is 
paralleled by all that is done by man under heaven, 
and the net result of all is ‘ Vanity and a strife after 
wind.’ 

The writer proceeds to confirm his dreary conclusion 
by a piece of autobiography put into the mouth of 
Solomon. He is represented as flinging himself into 
mirth and pleasure, into luxury and debauchery, and as 
satisfying every hunger for any joy, and as being 
pulled up short in the midst of his rioting by the 
conviction, like a funeral bell, tolling in his mind that 
all was vanity.. ‘He gave himself to wisdom, and | 
madness, and folly’; and in all he found but one result 


[cu 5. 


v. 13] TWO VIEWS OF LIFE 319 


—enormous effort and no profit. There seemed to be a 
time for everything, and a kind of demonic power in 
men compelling them to toil as with equal energy, now 
at building up, and now at destroying. But to every 
purpose he saw that there was ‘time and judgment,’ 
and therefore, ‘the misery of man was great upon 
him.’ To his jaundiced eye the effort of life appeared 
like the play of the wind in the desert, always busy, 
but sometime busy in heaping the sands in hillocks, 
and sometimes as busy in levelling them to a plain. 
We may regard such a view of humanity as gro- 
tesquely pessimistic; but there is no doubt that many 
of us do make of life little more than what the Preacher 
thought it. It is not only the victims of civilisation 
who are forced to wearisome monotony of toil which 
barely yields daily bread; but we see all around us 
men and women wearing out their lives in the race 
after a false happiness, gaining nothing by the race 
but weariness. What shall we say of the man who, in 
the desire to win wealth, or reputation, lives laborious 
days of cramping effort in one direction, and allows all 
the better part of his nature to be atrophied, and die, 
and passes, untasted, brooks by the way, the modest 
joys and delights that run through the dustiest lives. 
What is the difference between a squirrel in the cage 
who only makes his prison go round the faster by his 
swift race, and the man who lives toilsome days for 
transitory objects which he may never attain? In the 
old days every prison was furnished with a tread-mill, 
on which the prisoner being set was bound to step up 
on each tread of the revolving wheel, not in order to 
rise, but in order to prevent him from breaking his 
legs. How many men around us are on such a mill, 
and how many of them have fastened themselves on it, 





~ 


320 ECCLESIASTES 


and by their own misreading and misuse of life have | 


turned it into a dreary monotony of resultless toil. 
The Preacher may be more ingenious than sound in 
his pessimism, but let us not forget that every godless 
man does make of life ‘ Vanity and strife after wind.’ 
II. The higher truth which completes the Preacher's. 
Of course the fragmentary sentence in our second 
text needs to be completed from the context, and so 
completed will stand, ‘God chastens us for our profit, 





‘on 


that we should be partakers of His holiness.’ Now let 


us consider for a moment the thought that the true 
meaning of life is discipline. I say discipline rather 
than ‘chastening,’ for chastening simply implies the 
fact of pain, whereas discipline includes the wholesome 
purpose of pain. The true meaning of life is not to be 
found by estimating its sorrows or its joys, but by 
trying to estimate the effects of either upon us. The 
true value of life, and the meaning of all its tears and 
of all its joys, is what it makes us. If the enormous 
effort which struck the Preacher issues in strengthened 
muscles and braced limbs, it is not ‘vanity. He who 
carries away with him out of life a character moulded 
as God would have it, does not go in all points ‘naked 
as he came. He bears a developed self, and that is the 
greatest treasure that a man can carry out of multi- 
tudinous toils of the busiest life. If we would think 
less of our hard work and of our heavy sorrows, and 
more of the loving purpose which appoints them all, 
we should find life less difficult, less toilsome, less 
mysterious. That one thought taken to our hearts, 
and honestly applied to everything that befalls us, 
would untie many a riddle, would wipe away many a 
tear, would bring peace and patience into many a 
heart, and would make still brighter many a gladness. 


v.13] TWO VIEWS OF LIFE 821 


Without it our lives are a chaos; with it they would 
become an ordered world. 

But the recognition of the hand that ministers the 
discipline is needed to complete the peacefulness of 
faith. It would be a dreary world if we could only 
think of some inscrutable or impersonal power that 
inflicted the discipline; but if in its sharpest pangs we 
give ‘reverence to the Father of spirits,’ we shall ‘live.’ 
Of course, a loving father sees to his children’s educa- 
tion, and a loving child cannot but believe that the 
father’s single purpose in all his discipline is his good. 
The good that is sought to be attained by the sharpest 
chastisement is better than the good that is given by 
weak indulgence. When the father’s hand wields the 
rod, and a loving child receives the strokes, they may 
sting, but they do not wound. The ‘fathers of our flesh 
chasten us after their own pleasure, and there may 
be error and arbitrariness in their action; and the 
child may sometimes nourish a right sense of injustice, 
but ‘the Father of spirits’ makes no mistakes, and 
never strikes too hurd. ‘He for our profit’ carries 
with it the deilaration that the deep heart of God doth 
not willingly afflict, and seeks in afflicting for nothing 
but His children’s good. 

Nor are these all the truths by which the New 
Testament completes and supersedes the Preacher’s 
pessimism, for our text closes by unveiling the highest 
profit which discipline is meant to secure to us as 
being that we should be ‘partakers of His holiness.’ 
The Biblical conception of holiness in God is that of 
separation from and elevation above the creature. 
Man’s holiness is separation from the world and dedica- 
tion to God. Heis separated from the world by moral 
perfection yet more than by His other attributes, and 

x 





<4 


822 ECCLESIASTES (ou. I. 


men who have yielded themselves to Him will share in 
that characteristic. This assimilation to His nature is 
the highest ‘ profit’ to which we can attain, and all the 
purpose of His chastening is to make us more com- 
pletely like Himself. ‘The fathers of our flesh’ chasten 
with a view to the brief earthly life, but His chastening 
looks onwards beyond the days of ‘strife and vanity’ 
to a calm eternity. 

Thus, then, the immortality which glimmered doubt- 
fully in the end of his book before the eyes of the 
Preacher is the natural inference for the Christian 
thought of moral discipline as the great purpose of 
life. No doubt it might be possible for a man to believe 
in the supreme importance of character, and in all the 
discipline of life as subsidiary to its development, and 
yet not believe in another world, where all that was 
tendency, often thwarted, should be accomplished re- 
sult, and the schooling ended the rod should be broken. 
But such a position will be very rare and very absurd. 
To recognise moral discipline as the greatest purpose of 
life, gives quite overwhelming probability to a future. 
Surely God does not take such pains with us in order 
to make no more of us than He makes of us in this 
world. Surely human life becomes ‘confusion worse 
confounded’ if it is carefully, sedulously, continuously 
tended, checked, inspired, developed by all the various 
experiences of sorrow and joy, and then, at death, 
broken short off, as a man might break a stick across 
his knee, and the fragments tossed aside and forgotten. 
If we can say, ‘He for our profit that we might be 
partakers of His holiness, we have the right to say 
‘We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.’ 


*A TIME TO PLANT’ 
*A time to plant.’—Ecc ss, iii. 2, 


The writer enumerates in this context a number of 
opposite courses of conduct arranged in pairs, each of 
which is right at the right time. The view thus 
presented seems to him to be depressing, and to 
make life difficult to understand, and aimless. We 
always appear to be building up with one hand and 
pulling down with the other. The ship never heads 
for two miles together in the same direction. The 
history of human affairs appears to be as purposeless 
as the play of the wind on the desert sands, which it 
sometimes piles into huge mounds and then scatters. 

So he concludes that only God, who appoints the 
seasons that demand opposite courses of conduct, 
can understand what it all means. The engine-driver 
knows why he reverses his engine, and not the wheels 
that are running in opposite directions in consecutive 
moments according to his will. 

Now that is a one-sided view, of course, for it is to be 
remembered that the Book of Ecclesiastes is the log- 
book of a voyager after truth, and tells us all the 
wanderings and errors of his thinking until he has 
arrived at the haven of the conclusion that he an- 
nounces in the final word: ‘Hear the sum of the whole 
matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments, for 
this is the whole duty of man.’ 

I have nothing to do just now with the conclusion 
which he arrives at, but the facts from which he starts 
are significant and important. There are things in 
life, God has so arranged it, which can only be done 


fittingly, and for the most part of all, at certain 
828 





824 ECCLESIASTES [on 


seasons; and the secret of success is the discernment 
of present duty, and the prompt performance of it. 

And this is especially true about your time of life, 
my young friends. There are things, very important 
things, which, unless you do them now, the over- 
whelming probability is that you will never do at all; 
and the certainty is that you will not do them half as 
well. And so I want to ask you to look at these words, 
which, by a legitimate extension of the writer’s mean- 
ing, and taking them in a kind of parabolic way, may 
sum up for us the whole of the special duties of youth. 
‘A time to plant.’ 

I. Now, my first remark is this: that you are now in 
the planting time of your lives. 

No wise forester will try to shift shrubs or to put 
them into his gardens or woods, except in late autumn 
or early spring. And our lives are as really under the 
dominion of the law of seasons as the green world of 
the forest and the fields. Speaking generally, and 
admitting the existence of many exceptions, the years 
between childhood and, say, two or three-and-twenty, 
for a young man or woman, for the most part settle 
the main outline of their character, and thereby deter- 
mine their history, which, after all, is mainly the 
outcome of their character. 

~ You have wide possibilities before you, of moulding 
your characters into beauty, and purity, holiness, and 
strength. 

For one thing, you have got no past, or next to none, 

‘written all over, which it is hard to erase. You have 
substantially a clean sheet on which to write what you 
like. Your stage of life predisposes you in favour of 
novelty. New things are glad things to you, whereas 
to us older people a new thought coming into some of 


re 


v, 3] ‘A TIME TO PLANT’ 825 


our brains is like a new bit of furniture coming into 
a crowded room. All the other pieces need to be 
arranged, and it is more of a trouble than anything 
else. You are flexible and plastic as yet, like the iron 
running out of the blast furnace in a molten stream, 
which in half an hour’s time will be a rigid bar that no 
man can bend. 

You have all these things in your favour, and so, 
dear young friends, whether you think of it or not, 
whether voluntarily or not, I want you to remember 
that this awful process is going on inevitably and 
constantly in every one of you. You are planting, 
whether you recognise the fact or no. What are you 
planting? us 

Well, for one thing, you are making habits, which 
are but actions hardened, like the juice that exudes 
from the pine-tree, liquid, or all but liquid, when it 
comes out, and when exposed to the air, is solidified and 
tenacious. The old legend of the man in the tower 
who got a slim thread up to his window, to which was 
attached one thicker and then thicker, and so on ever 
increasing until he hauled in a cable, is a true parable 
of what goes on in every human life. Some one deed, 
a thin film like a spider's thread, draws after it a 
thicker, by that inevitable law that a thing done once 
tends to be done twice, and that the second time it is 
easier than the first time. A man makes a track with 
great difficulty across the snow in a morning, but every 
time that he travels it, it is a little harder, and the 
track is a little broader, and it is easier walking. You 
play with the tiger's whelp of some pleasant, question- 
able enjoyment, and you think that it will always keep 
so innocent, with its budding claws not able to draw 
blood, but it grows—it grows. And it grows according 





826 ECCLESIASTES (cH. 


to its kind, and what was a plaything one day is a 
full-grown and ravening wild beast in a while. You 
are making habits, whatever else you are making, and 
you are planting in your hearts seeds that will spring 
and bear fruit according to their kind. 

Then remember, you are planting belief.—Most of us, 
I am afraid, get our opinions by haphazard; like the 
child in the well-known story, whose only account of 
herself was that ‘she expected she growed.’ That is 
the way by which most of you come to what you 
dignify by the name of your opinions. They come in 
upon you, you do not know how. Youth is receptive 
of anything new. You can learn a vast deal more 
easily than many of us older people can. Set downa 
man who has never learned the alphabet, to learn his 
letters, and see what a task it is for him. Or if he takes 
a pen in his hand for the first time, look how difficult 
the stiff wrist and thick knuckles find it to bend. Yours 
is the time for forming your opinions, for forming 
some rational and intelligent account of yourself and 
the world about you. See to it, that you plant truth in 
your hearts, under which you may live sheltered for 
many days. 

Then again, you are planting character, which is not 
only habit, but something more. You are making 
yourselves, whatever else you are making. You begin 
with almost boundless possibilities, and these narrow 
and narrow and narrow, according to your actions, 
until you have laid the rails on which you travel—one 
narrow line that you cannot get off. A man’s character 
is, if I may use a chemical term, a ‘precipitate’ from 
his actions. Why, it takes acres of roses to make a 
flask of perfume; and all the long life of a man is 
represented in his ultimate eharacter. Character is 


v. 2] ‘A TIME TO PLANT’ 327 


formed like those chalk cliffs in the south, built up 
eight hundred feet, beetling above the stormy sea; and 
all made up of the relics of microscopic animals. So 
you build up a great solid structure—yourself—out of 
all your deeds. You are making your character, your 
habits, your opinions.—And you are making your 
reputation too. And you will not be able to get rid of 
that. This is the time for you to make a good record 
or a bad one, in other people’s opinions. 

And so, young men and women, boys and girls, I 
want you to remember the permanent effects of your 
most fleeting acts. Nothing ever dies that a man does. 
Nothing! You go into a museum, and you will see 
standing there a slab of red sandstone, and little dints 
and dimples upon it. What are they? Marks made 
by a flying shower that lasted for five minutes, nobody 
knows how many millenniumsago. And there they are, 
and there they will be until the world is burned up. 
So our fleeting deeds are all recorded here, in our 
permanent character. Everything that we have done 
is laid up there in the testimony of the rocks :— 


‘Through our soul the echoes roll, 
And grow for ever and for ever.’ 


You are now living in ‘a time to plant.’ 

II. Notice, in the next place, that as surely as now is 
the time to plant, then will be a time to reap. 

Ido not know whether the writer of my text meant 
the harvest, when he put in antithesis to my text the 
other clause, ‘and a time to pluck up that which is 
planted. Probably, as most of the other pairs are 
opposites, here, too, we are to see an opposite rather 
than a result; the destructive action of plucking up, 
and not the preservative action of gathering a harvest. 





328 ECCLESIASTES -° (cH. 11. 


But, however that may be, let me remind you 
that there stands, irrefragable, for every human 
soul and every human deed, this great solemn law of 
retribution. 

Now what lies in that law? Two things—that the 
results are similar in kind, and more in number. The 
law of likeness, and the law of increase, both of them 
belong to the working of the law of retribution. And 
so, be sure that you will find out that all your past lives 
on into your present; and that the present, in fact, is 
very little more than the outcome of the past. What 
you plant as a youth you will reap as a man. This 
mysterious life of ours is all sowing and reaping inter- 
mingled, right away on to the very end. Each action 
is in turn the child of all the preceding and the parent 
of all that follows. But still, though that be true, your 
time of life is predominantly the time of sowing; and 
my time of life, for instance, is predominantly the time 
of reaping. There are a great many things that I 
could not do now if I wished. There are a great many 
things in our past that I, and men of my age, would 
fain alter; but there they stand, and nothing can do 
away the marks of that which once has been. We 
have to reap, and so will you some day. 

And I will tell you what you will have to reap, as 
sure as you are sitting in those pews. You will have 
the enlarged growth of your present characteristics. 
A man takes a photograph upon a sensitive plate, half 
the size of the palm of my hand; and then he enlarges 
it to any size he pleases. And that is what life does for 
all of us. The pictures, drawn small on the young 
man’s imagination, on the young woman’s dreaming 
heart, be they of angels or of beasts, are permanent; 
and they will get bigger and bigger and bigger, as you 





v. 2] ‘A TIME TO PLANT’ 829 


get older. You do not reap only as much as you sowed, 
but ‘some sixty fold, and some an hundred fold.’ 

And you will reap the increased dominion of your 
early habits. There is a grim verse in the Book of 
Proverbs that speaks about a man being tied and 
bound by the chains of his sins. And that is just say- 
ing that the things which you chose to do when you 
were a boy, many of them you will have to do when 
you are a man; because you have lost the power, 
though sometimes not the will, of doing anything else. 
There be men that sow the wind, and they do not reap 
the wind, but the law of increase comes in and they 
reap the whirlwind. There be men who, according to 
the old Greek legend, sow dragon’s teeth and they reap 
armed soldiers. There are some of you that are sowing 
to the flesh, and as sure as God lives, you will ‘of the 
fiesh reap corruption.’ ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, 
that,’ even here, ‘shall he also reap.’ 

And let me remind you that that law of inheriting the 
fruit of our doings is by no means exhausted by the 
experience of life. Whenever conscience is awakened 
it at once testifies not only of a broken law, but of a 
living Law-giver; and not only of retribution here, but 
of retribution hereafter. And I for my part believe 
that the modern form of Christianity and the ten- 
dencies of the modern pulpit, influenced by some 
theological discussions, about details in the notion of 
retribution that have been going on of late years, have 
operated to make ministers of the Gospel too chary 
of preaching, and hearers indisposed to accept, the 
message of ‘the terror of the Lord.’ My dear friends! 
retribution cannot stop on this side of the grave, and 
if you are going yonder you are carrying with you the 
necessity in yourself for inheriting the results of your 





330 ECCLESIASTES (cH. 11. 


life here. I beseech you, do not put away such thoughts 
as this, with the notion tht I am brandishing before 
you some antiquated docirine, fit only to frighten old 
women and children. ‘The writer of the Book of 
Ecclesiastes was no weak-minded, superstitious fanatic. 
He was far more disposed to scepticism than to fanati- 
cism. But for all that, with all his sympathy for young 
men’s breadth and liberality, with his tolerance for 
all sorts and ways of living, with all his doubts and 
questionings, he came to this, and this was his teaching 
to the young men whom in idea he had gathered round 
his chair,—‘ Rejoice, oh young man, in thy youth. And 
let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and 
walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of 
thine eyes.’ By all means, God has put you into a fair 
world, and meant you to get all the good out of it. 
‘But,’ and that not as a kill-joy, ‘know thou, that for 
all these things God will bring thee into judgment, 
and shape your characters accordingly. 

III. Still further, let me say, these things being so, 
you especially need to ponder them. 

That is so, because you especially are in danger of 
forgetting them. It is meant that young people should 
live by impulse much more than by reflection. 


‘If nature put not forth her power 
About the opening of the flower, 
Who is there that could live an hour?’ 


The days of calculation will come soon enough; and 
I do not want to hurry them. I do not want to put old 
heads upon young shoulders. I would rather see the 
young ones, a great deal. But I want you not to ge 
down to the level of the beast, living only by instinet 
and by impulse. You have got brains, you are meant 


v. 2] ‘A TIME TO PLANT’ 331 


to use them. You have the great divine gift of reason, 
that looks before and after, and though you have not 
much experience yet, you can, if you will, reflect upon 
such things as I have just been saying to you, and 
take them into your hearts, and live accordingly. My 
dear young friend! enjoy yourself, live buoyantly, yield 
to your impulses, be glad for the beautiful life that is 
unfolding around you, and the strong nature that is 
blossoming within you. And then take this other 
lesson, ‘Ponder the path of thy feet,’ and remember 
that all the while you dance along the flowery path, 
you are planting what you will have to reap. 

Then, still further, it is especially needful for you 
that you should ponder these things, because unless 
you do you will certainly go wrong. If you do not 
plant good, somebody else will plant evil. An untilled 
field is not a field that nothing grows in, but it is a 
field full of weeds; and the world and the flesh and the 
devil, the temptations round about you and the evil 
tendencies in you, unless they are well kept down and 
kept off, are sure to fill your souls full of all manner of 
seeds that will spring up to bitterness, and poison, and 
death. Oh! think, think! for it is the only chances of 
keeping your hearts from being full of wickedness— 
think what you are sowing, and think what will the 
harvest be. There are some of you, as I said, sowing 
to the flesh, young men living impure and wicked lives, 
and ‘their bones are full of the sins of their youth.’ 
There are some of you letting every wind bring the 
thistledown of vanities, and scatter them all across 
your hearts, that they may spring up prickly, and 
gifted with a fatal power of self-multiplication. There 
are some of you, young men, and young women too, 
whose lives are divided between Manchester business 





882 ECCLESIASTES 


and that ignoble thirst for mere amusement which is 
eating all the dignity and the earnestness out of the 
young men of this city. I beseech you, do not slide 
into habits of frivolity, licentiousness, and sin, for want 
of looking after yourselves. Remember, if you do not 
ponder the path of your feet, you are sure to take the 
turn to the left. 

Again, it is needful for you to ponder these things, 
for if you waste this time, it will never come back to 
you any more. It is useless to sow corn in August. 
There are things in this world that a man can only 
get when he is young, such as sound education, for 
instance; business habits, habits of industry, of appli- 
cation, of concentration, of self-control, a reputation 
which may avail in the future. If you do not begin to 
get these before you are five-and-twenty, you will never 
get them. 

And although the certainty is not so absolute in 
regard to spiritual and religious things, the dice are 
frightfully weighted, and the chances are terribly 
small that a young man who, like some of you, has 
.nassed his early years in church or chapel, in weekly 
coniact with earnest preaching, and has not accepted 
the Saviour, will do it when he grows old. He may; 
he may. But it is a great deal more likely that he 
will not. 

IV. The conclusion of the whole matter is, Begin on 
the spot, to trust and to serve Jesus Christ. 

These are the best things to plant—simple reliance 
upon His death for your forgiveness, upon His power 
to make you pure and clean; simple submission to His 
‘commandment. Oh! dear young friend; if you have 
these in your hearts everything will come right. You 
will get habit on your side, and that is much; and you 


v. 2] ‘A TIME TO PLANT’ 883 


will be saved from a great deal of misery which would 
be yours if you went wrong first, and then came right. 

If you will plant a cutting of the tree of life in your 
heart it will yield everything to you when it grows. 
The people in the South Seas, if they have a palm-tree, 
can get out of it bread and drink, food, clothing, 
shelter, light, materials for books, cordage for their 
boats, needles to sew with, and everything. If you 
will take Jesus Christ, and plant Him in your hearts, 
everything will come out of that. That Tree ‘bears 
twelve manners of fruits, and yields His fruit every 
month.’ With Christ in your heart all other fair 
things will be planted there; and with Him in your 
heart, all evil things which you may already have 
planted there, will be rooted out. Just as when some 
strong exotic is carried to some distant land and there 
takes root, it exterminates the feebler vegetation of 
the place to which it comes; so with Christ in my 
heart the sins, the evil habits, the passions, the lusts, 
and all other foul spawn and offspring, will die and 
disappear. Take Him, then, dear friend! by simple 
faith, for your Saviour. He will plant the good seed in 
your spirit, and ‘instead of the briar shall come up the 
myrtle. Your lives will become fruitful of goodness 
and of joy, according to that ancient promise: ‘The 
righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree; he shall 
grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted 
in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts 
of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in 
old age.’ 





ETERNITY IN THE HEART 


“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also He hath set the world 
in their heart.’—Eccxgs. iii. 11. 


THERE is considerable difficulty in understanding what 
precise meaning is to be attached to these words, and 
what precise bearing they have on the general course 
of the writer’s thoughts; but one or two things are, 
at any rate, quite clear. 

The Preacher has been enumerating all the various 
vicissitudes of prosperity and adversity, of construc- 
tion and destruction, of society and solitude, of love 
and hate, for which there is scope and verge enough 
in one short human life; and his conclusion is, as it 
always is in the earlier part of this book, that because 
there is such an endless diversity of possible occupa- 
tion, and each of them lasts but for a little time, 
and its opposite has as good a right of existence as 
itself; therefore, perhaps, it might be as well that 
a man should do nothing as do all these opposite 
things which neutralise each other, and the net result 
of which is nothing. If there be a time to be born 
and a time to die, nonentity would be the same when 
all is over. If there be a time to plant and a time 
to pluck, what is the good of planting? If there be 
a time for love and a time for hate, why cherish affee- 
tions which are transient and may be succeeded by 
their opposites ? 

And then another current of thought passes through 
his mind, and he gets another glimpse somewhat 
different, and says in effect, ‘No! that is not all 
true—God has made all these different changes, and 


although each of them seems contradictory of the 
984 


, 


v.11] ETERNITY IN THE HEART 335 


other, in its own place and at its own time each is 
beautiful and has a right to exist. The contexture 
of life, and even the perplexities and darknesses of 
human society, and the varieties of earthly condition— 
if they be confined within their own proper limits, 
and regarded as parts of a whole—they are all co- 
operant to an end. As from wheels turning different 
ways in some great complicated machine, and yet 
fitting by their cogs into one another, there may be 
a resultant direct motion produced even by these 
apparently antagonistic forces. 

But the second clause of our text adds a thought 
which is in some sense contrasted with this. 

The word rendered ‘world’ is a very frequent one in 
the Old Testament, and has never but one meaning, 
and that meaning is eternity. ‘He hath set eternity in 
their heart.’ 

Here, then, are two antagonistic facts. They are 
transient things, a vicissitude which moves within 
natural limits, temporary events which are beautiful 
in their season. But there is also the contrasted fact, 
that the man who is thus tossed about, as by some 
great battledore wielded by giant powers in mockery, 
from one changing thing to another, has relations to 
something more lasting than the transient. He lives 
in a world of fleeting change, but he has ‘eternity’ 
in ‘his heart.’ So between him and his dwelling-place, 
between him and his occupations, there is a gulf of 
disproportion. He is subjected to these alternations, 
and yet bears within him a repressed but immortal 
consciousness that he belongs to another order of 
things, which knows no vicissitude and fears no decay. 
He possesses stifled and misinterpreted longings which, 
however starved, do yet survive, after unchanging 


336 ECCLESIASTES 





Being and eternal Rest. And thus endowed, and by 
contrast thus situated, his soul is full of the ‘blank 
misgiving of a creature moving about in worlds not 
realised. Out of these two facts—says our text— 
man’s where and man’s what, his nature and his 
position, there rises a mist of perplexity and darkness 
that wraps the whole course of the divine actions— 
unless, indeed, we have reached that central height of 
vision above the mists, which this Book of Ecclesiastes 
puts forth at last as the conclusion of the whole 
matter—‘Fear God, and keep His commandments.’ 
If transitory things with their multitudinous and 
successive waves toss us to solid safety on the Rock 
of Ages, then all is well, and many mysteries will be 
clear. But if not, if we have not found, or rather 
followed, the one God-given way of harmonising these 
two sets of experiences—life in the transient, and 
longings for the eternal—then their antagonism 
darkens our thoughts of a wise and loving Providence, 
and we have lost the key to the confused riddle which — 
the world then presents. ‘He hath made everything 
beautiful in his time: also He hath set Eternity in 
their heart, so that no man can find out the work 
that God maketh from the beginning to the end.’ 

Such, then, being a partial but, perhaps, not entirely 
inadequate view of the course of thought in the words 
before us, I may now proceed to expand the considera- 
tions thus brought under our notice in them. These 
may be gathered up in three principal ones: the con- 
sciousness of Eternity in every heart; the dispropor- 
tion thence resulting between this nature of ours and 
the order of things in which we dwell; and finally, the 
possible satisfying of that longing in men’s hearts— 
a possibility not indeed referred to in our text, but 


v.11] ETERNITY IN THE HEART 337 


unveiled as the final word of this Book of Ecclesiastes, 
and made clear to us in Jesus Christ. 

I. Consider that eternity is set in every human heart. 

The expression is, of course, somewhat difficult, even 
if we accept generally the explanation which I have 
given. It may be either a declaration of the actual 
immortality of the soul, or it may mean, as I rather 
suppose it to do, the consciousness of eternity which 
is part of human nature. 

The former idea is no doubt closely connected with 
the latter, and would here yield an appropriate sense. 
We should then have the contrast between man’s un- 
dying existence and the transient trifles on which he 
is tempted to fix his love and hopes. We belong to 
one set of existences by our bodies, and to another by 
our souls. Though we are parts of the passing 
material world, yet in that outward frame is lodged 
a personality that has nothing in common with decay 
and death. A spark of eternity dwells in these fleeting 
frames. The laws of physical growth and accretion 
and maturity and decay, which rule over all things 
material, do not apply to my true self. ‘In our embers 
is something that doth live. Whatsoever befalls the 
hairs that get grey and thin, and the hands that be- 
come wrinkled and palsied, and the heart that is worn 
out by much beating, and the blood that clogs and 
clots at last, and the filmy eye, and all the corruptible 
frame; yet, as the heathen said, ‘I shall not all die,’ 
but deep within this transient clay house, that must 
crack and fall and be resolved into the elements out 
of which it was built up, there dwells an immortal 
guest, an undying personal self. In the heart, the 
inmost spiritual being of every man, eternity, in this 
sense of the word, does dwell. 

Y 





338 ECCLESIASTES 


‘Commonplaces, you say. Yes; commonplaces, 
which word means two things—truths that affect us 
all, and also truths which, because they are so universal 
and so entirely believed, are all but powerless. Surely 
it is not time to stop preaching such truths as long — 
as they are forgotten by the overwhelming majority 
of the people who acknowledge them. Thank God! 
the staple of the work of us preachers is the reitera- 
tion of commonplaces, which His goodness has made 
familiar, and our indolence and sin have made stale 
and powerless. 

My brother! you would be a wiser man if, instead 
of turning the edge of statements which you know ~ 
to be true, and which, if true, are infinitely solemn 
and important, by commonplace sarcasm about pulpit 
commonplaces, you would honestly try to drive the 
familiar neglected truth home to your mind and heart. 
Strip it of its generality and think, ‘It is true about — 
me. I live for ever. My outward life will cease, and 
my dust will return to dust—but J shall last undying,’ © 
And ask yourselves—What then? ‘Am Imaking “pro- 
vision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof,” in more 
or less refined fashion, and forgetting to provide for 
that which lives for evermore? Eternity is in my 
heart. What a madness it is to go on, as if either 
I were to continue for ever among the shows of time, 
or when I leave them all, to die wholly and be done 
with altogether!’ 

But, probably, the other interpretation of these 
words is the truer. The doctrine of immortality does 
not seem to be stated in this Book of Ecclesiastes, 
except in one or two very doubtful expressions. And 
it is more in accordance with its whole tone to suppose 
the Preacher here to be asserting, not that the heart 


/ 


v.11] ETERNITY IN THE HEART 3389 


or spirit is immortal, but that, whether it is or no, 
in the heart is planted the thought, the consciousness of 
eternity—and the longing after it. 

Let me put that into other words. We, brethren, 
are the only beings on this earth who can think the 
thought and speak the word—Eternity. Other creatures 
are happy while immersed in time; we have another 
nature, and are disturbed by a thought which shines 
high above the roaring sea of circumstance in which 
we float. 

I do not care at present about the metaphysical 
puzzles that have been gathered round that conception, 
nor care to ask whether it is positive or negative, 
adequate or inadequate. Enough that the word has 
a@ meaning, that it corresponds to a thought which 
dwells in men’s minds. It is of no consequence at all 
for our purpose, whether it is a positive conception, 
or simply the thinking away of all limitations. ‘I 
know what God is, when you do not ask me. I know 
what eternity is, though I cannot define the word to 
satisfy a metaphysician. The little child taught by 
some grandmother Lois, in a cottage, knows what she 
means when she tells him ‘you will live for ever, 
though both scholar and teacher would be puzzled to 
put it into other words. When we say eternity flows 
round this bank and shoal of time, men know what 
wemean. Heart answers to heart; and in each heart 
lies that solemn thought—for ever! 

Like all other of the primal thoughts of men’s souls, 
it may be increased in force and clearness, or it may 
be neglected and opposed, and all but crushed. The 
thought of God is natural to man, the thought of right 
and wrong is natural to man—and yet there may be 
atheists who have blinded their eyes, and there may be 





340 ECCLESIASTES 


degraded and almost animal natures who have seared ~ 


their consciences and called sweet bitter and evil good. 
Thus men may so plunge themselves into the present 
as to lose the consciousness of the eternal—as a man 
swept over Niagara, blinded by the spray and deafened — 


by the rush, would see or hear nothing outside the : 


(ox. 11. ¥. 


' 





green walls of the death that encompassed him. And i 


yet the blue sky with its peaceful spaces stretches — 
above the hell of waters. 

So the thought is in us all—a presentiment and a 
consciousness; and. that universal presentiment itself 
goes far to establish the reality of the unseen order 


" 


of things to which it is directed. The great planet — 


that moves on the outmost circle of our system was 
discovered because that next it wavered in its course 
in a fashion which was inexplicable, unless some un- 
known mass was attracting it from across millions of 


miles of darkling space. And there are ‘perturbations’ — 


in our spirits which cannot be understood, unless from — 
them we may divine that far-off and unseen world, — 


that has power from afar to sway in their orbits the 
little lives of mortal men. It draws us to itself—but, 
alas! the attraction may be resisted and thwarted. 


The dead mass of the planet bends to the drawing, | 


but we can repel the constraint which the eternal 
world would exercise upon us—and so that conscious- 
ness which ought to be our nobleness, as it is our 
prerogative, may become our shame, our misery, and 
our sin. 

That Eternity which is set in our hearts is not 
merely the thought of ever-during Being, or of an 
everlasting order of things to which we are in some 
way related. But there are connected with it other 
ideas besides those of mere duration. Men know what 


v.11) ETERNITY IN THE HEART 341 


perfection means. They understand the meaning of 
perfect goodness; they have the notion of infinite 
Wisdom and boundless Love. These thoughts are the 
material of all poetry, the thread from which the 
imagination creates all her wondrous tapestries. This 
‘capacity for the Infinite,’ as people call it—which is 
only a fine way of putting the same thought as that 
in our text—which is the prerogative of human spirits, 
is likewise the curse of many spirits. By their misuse 
of it they make it a fatal gift, and turn it into an 
unsatisfied desire which gnaws their souls, a famished 
yearning which ‘roars, and suffers hunger. Knowing 
what perfection is, they turn to limited natures and 
created hearts for their rest. Having the haunting 
thought of an absolute Goodness, a perfect Wisdom, an 
endless Love, an eternal Life—they try to find the being 
that corresponds to their thought here on earth, and 
so they are plagued with endless disappointment. 

My brother! God has put eternity in your heart. Not 
only will you live for ever, but also in your present 
life you have a consciousness of that eternal and 
infinite and all-sufficient Being that lives above. You 
have need of Him, and whether you know it or not, 
the tendrils of your spirits, like some climbing plant 
not fostered by a careful hand but growing wild, are 
feeling out into the vacancy in order to grasp the 
stay which they need for their fruitage and their 
strength. 

By the make of our spirits, by the possibilities that 
dawn dim before us, by the thoughts ‘whose very 
sweetness yieldeth proof that they were born for im- 
mortality,—by all these and a thousand other signs 
and facts in every human life we say, ‘God has set 
eternity in their hearts!’ 





342 ECCLESIASTES 


II. And then turn to the second idea that is here, 
The disproportion between this our nature, and the 
world in which we dwell. 

The writer of this book (whether Solomon or no we 
need not stay to discuss) looks out upon the world; 
and in accordance with the prevailing tone of all 
the earlier parts of his contemplations, finds in this 
prerogative of man but another reason for saying, ‘ All 
is vanity and vexation of spirit.’ 

Two facts meet him antagonistic to one another: the 
place that man occupies, and the nature that man 
bears. This creature with eternity in his heart, where 
is he set? what has he got to work upon? what has 
he to love and hold by, to trust to, and anchor his life 


on? A crowd of things, each well enough, but each. 


having a time—and though -they be beautiful in their 


time, yet fading and vanishing when it has elapsed. — 


No multiplication of times will make eternity. And so 
with that thought in his heart, man is driven out 
among objects perfectly insufficient to meet it. 

Christ said, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air 
have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to 
lay His head’—and while the words have their proper 
and most pathetic meaning in the history of His own 
earthly life of travail and toil for our sakes, we may 
also venture to give them the further application, that 
all the lower creatures are at rest here, and that the 
more truly a man is man, the less can he find, among 
all the shadows of the present, a pillow for his head, 
a place of repose for his heart. The animal nature is 
at home in the material world, the human nature 
is not. 

Every other creature presents the most accurate 
correspondence between nature and circumstances, 


\ ( 


(oH. 11. 


v.11] ETERNITY IN THE HEART 343 


powers and occupations. Man alone is like some poor 
land-bird blown out to sea, and floating half-drowned 
with clinging plumage on an ocean where the dove 
‘finds no rest for the sole of her foot, or like some 
creature that loves to glance in the sunlight, but is 
plunged into the deepest recesses of a dark mine. In 
the midst of a universe marked by the nicest adapta- 
tions of creatures to their habitation, man alone, the 
head of them all, presents the unheard-of anomaly 
that he is surrounded by conditions which do not fit 
his whole nature, which are not adequate for all his 
powers, on which he cannot feed and nurture his 
whole being. ‘To what purpose is this waste?’ ‘Hast 
thou made all men in vain?’ 
Everything is ‘beautiful in its time.’ Yes, and for 
that very reason, as this Book of Ecclesiastes says in 
another verse, ‘Because to every purpose there is time 
and judgment, therefore the misery of man is great 
upon him.’ It was happy when we loved; but the day 
of indifference and alienation and separation comes, 
Our spirits were glad when we were planting; but the 
time for plucking up that which was planted is sure 
to draw near. It was blessed to pour out our souls 
in the effluence of love, or in the fullness of thought, 
and the time to speak was joyous; but the dark day 
of silence comes on. When we twined hearts and 
clasped hands together it was glad, and the time when 
we embraced was blessed; but the time to refrain 
from embracing is as sure to draw near. It is good 
for the eyes to behold the sun, but so certainly ‘as it 
rolls to its bed in the west, and ‘leaves the world 
to darkness’ and to us, do all earthly occupations wane 
and fade, and all possessions shrivel and dwindle, 
and all associations snap and drop and end, and the 


B44 ECCLESIASTES (cH. mn. 
whirligig of time works round and takes away every- 
thing which it once brought us. 

And so man, with eternity in his heart, with the 
hunger in his spirit after an unchanging whole, an 
absolute good, an ideal perfectness, an immortal being 
—is condemned to the treadmill of transitory revolu- 
tion. Nothing continueth in one stay, ‘For all that 
is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of 
the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, 
but is of the world. And the world passeth away, 
and the lust thereof.’ It is limited, it is changeful, it 
slips from under us as we stand upon it, and therefore, 
mystery and perplexity stoop down upon the provi- 
dence of God, and misery and loneliness enter into 
the heart of man. These changeful things, they do 
not meet our ideal, they do not satisfy our wants, they 
do not last even our duration. 

‘The misery of man is great upon him,’ said the 
text quoted a moment ago. And is it not? Is this 
present life enough for you? Sometimes you fancy 
itis. Many of us habitually act on the understanding 
that it is, and treat all that I have been saying about 
the disproportion between our nature and our circum- 
stances as not true about them. ‘This world not 
enough for me!’ you say—‘ Yes! it is; only let me 
get a little more of it, and keep what I get, and I 
shall be all right.’ So then—‘a little more’ is wanted, 
is it? And that ‘little more’ will always be wanted, 
and besides it, the guarantee of permanence will always 
be wanted, and failing these, there will be a hunger 
that nothing can fill which belongs to earth. Do you 
remember the bitter experience of the poor prodigal, 
‘he would fain have filled his belly with the husks’? 
He tried his best to live upon the horny, innutritious 






} 


A 

. 
P 
, 
§ 
4 
: 
: 
{ 
‘ 


v.11] ETERNITY IN THE HEART 345 


pods, but he could not; and after them he still was 
‘perishing with hunger. So it is with us all when 
we try to fill the soul and satisfy the spirit with 
earth or aught that holds of it. It is as impossible 
to still the hunger of the heart with that, as to stay 
the hunger of the body with wise sayings or noble 
sentiments. 

I appeal to your real selves, to your own past ex- 
perience. Is it not true that, deep below the surface 
contentment with the world and the things of the 
world, a dormant but slightly slumbering sense of 
want and unsatisfied need lies in your souls? Is it 
not true that it wakes sometimes at a touch; that 
the tender, dying light of sunset, or the calm abysses 
of the mighty heavens, or some strain of music, or a 
line in a book, or a sorrow in your heart, or the 
solemnity of a great joy, or close contact with sickness 
and death, or the more direct appeals of Scripture and 
of Christ, stir a wistful yearning and a painful sense 
of emptiness in your hearts, and of insufficiency in all 
the ordinary pursuits of your lives? It cannot but 
be so; for though it be true that our natures are 
in some measure subdued to what we work in, and 
although it is possible to atrophy the deepest parts 
of our being by long neglect or starvation, yet you will 
never do that so thoroughly but that the deep-seated 
longing will break forth at intervals, and the cry of 
its hunger echo through the soul.. Many of us do 
our best to silence it. But I, for my part, believe 
that, however you have crushed and hardened your 
souls by indifference, by ambition, by worldly cares, 
by frivolous or coarse pleasures, or by any of the 
thousand other ways in which you can do it—yet 
there is some response in your truest self to my poor 


’ 





346 ECCLESIASTES (cH. 111. 
words when I declare that a soul without God is an 
empty and an aching soul! 

These things which, even in their time of beauty, 
are not enough for a man’s soul—have all but a time 
to be beautiful in, and then they fade and die. A 
great botanist made what he called ‘a floral clock’ 
to mark the hours of the day by the opening and 
closing of flowers. It was a graceful and yet a pathetic 
thought. One after another they spread their petals, 
and their varying colours glow in the light. But one 
after another they wearily shut their cups, and the 
night falls, and the latest of them folds itself together, 
and all are hidden away in the dark. So our joys 
and treasures, were they sufficient did they last, cannot 
last. After a summer’s day comes a summer's night, 
and after a brief space of them comes winter, when 
all are killed and the leafless trees stand silent, 


‘Bare, ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.’ 


We cleave to these temporal possessions and joys, 
and the natural law of change sweeps them away 
from us one by one. Most of them do not last so 
long as we do, and they pain us when they pass away 
from us. Some of them last longer than we do, and 
they pain us when we pass away from them. Either 
way our hold of them is a transient hold, and one 
knows not whether is the sadder—the bare garden 
beds where all have done blowing, and nothing remains 
but a tangle of decay, or the blooming beauty from 
which a man is summoned away, leaving others to 
reap what he has sown. Tragic enough are both at 
the best—and certain to befall us all. We live and 
they fade; we die and they remain. We live again 
and they are far away. The facts are so. We may 


v.11] ETERNITY IN THE HEART 347 


make them a joy or a sorrow as we will. Transiency 
is stamped on all our possessions, occupations, and 
delights. We have the hunger for eternity in our 
souls, the thought of eternity in our hearts, the destina- 
tion for eternity written on our inmost being, and the 
need to ally ourselves with eternity proclaimed even 
by the most short-lived trifles of time. Hither these 
things will be the blessing or the curse of our lives. 
Which do you mean that they shall be for you? 

III. These thoughts lead us to consider the possible 
satisfying of our souls. 

This Book of Ecclesiastes is rather meant to enforce 
the truth of the weariness and emptiness of a godless 
life, than of the blessedness of a godly one. It is the 
record of the struggles of a soul—‘ the confessions of an 
inquiring spirit’—feeling and fighting its way through 
many errors, and many partial and unsatisfactory 
solutions of the great problem of life, till he reaches 
the one in which he can rest. When he has touched 
that goal his work is done. And so the devious way 
is told in the book at full length, while a sentence 
sets forth the conclusion to which he was working, 
even when he was most bewildered. ‘The conclusion 
of the whole matter’ is ‘Fear God and keep His com- 
mandments. That is all that a man needs. Itis ‘the 
whole of man.’ ‘All is’ not ‘vanity and vexatior of 
spirit’ then—but ‘all things work together for good 
to them that love God.’ 

The Preacher in his day learned that it was possible 
to satisfy the hunger for eternity, which had once 
seemed to him a questionable blessing. He learned 
that it was a loving Providence which had made man’s 
home so little fit for him, that he might seek the ‘city 
which hath foundations.’ He learned that all the pain 


348 ECCLESIASTES 


of passing beauty, and the fading flowers of man’s 


: 


goodliness, were capable of being turned into a solemn 
joy. Standing at the centre, he saw order instead of 
chaos, and when he had come back, after all his search, 
to the old simple faith of peasants and children in 
Judah, to fear God and keep His commandments, he 
understood why God had set eternity in man’s heart, 
and then flung him out, as if in mockery, amidst the 
stormy waves of the changeful ocean of time. 

And we, who have a further word from God, may 
have a fuller and yet more blessed conviction, built 
upon our own happy experience, if we choose, that 
it is possible for us to have that deep thirst slaked, 
that longing appeased. We have Christ to trust to 
and to love. He has given Himself for us that all our 
many sins against the eternal love and our guilty 
squandering of our hearts upon transitory treasures 
may be forgiven. He has come amongst us, the Word 
in human flesh, that our poor eyes may see the Eternal 
walking amidst the things of time and sense, and may 
discern a beauty in Him beyond ‘whatsoever things 
are lovely.’ He has come that we through Him may 
lay hold on God, even as in Him God lays hold on us. 
As in mysterious and transcendent union the divine 
takes into itself the human in that person of Jesus, 
and Eternity is blended with Time; we, trusting Him 
and yielding our hearts to Him, receive into our poor 
lives an incorruptible seed, and for us the soul-satisfy- 
ing realities that abide for ever mingle with and are 
reached through the shadows that pass away. 

Brethren, yield yourselves to Him! Im conscious 
unworthiness, in lowly penitence, let us cast ourselves 
on Jesus Christ, our Sacrifice, for pardon and peace! 
Trust Him and love Him! Live by Him and for Him! 





v.11] ETERNITY IN THE HEART 349 


And then, the loftiest thoughts of our hearts, as they 
seek after absolute perfection and changeless love, 
shall be more than fulfilled in Him who is more than 
all that man ever dreamed, because He is the perfec- 
tion of man, and the Son of God. 

Love Christ and live in Him, taking Him for the 
motive, the spring, and the very atmosphere of your 
lives, and then no capacities will languish for lack of 
either stimulus or field, and no weariness will come 
over you, as if you were a stranger from your home. 
For if Christ be near us, all things go well with us. If 
we live for Him, the power of that motive will make 
all our nature blossom like the vernal woods, and dry 
branches break into leafage. If we dwell in Him, we 
shall be at home wherever we are, like the patriarch 
who pitched his tent in many lands, but always had 
the same tent wherever he went. So we shall have 
the one abode, though its place in the desert may 
vary—and we shall not need to care whether the 
encampment be beneath the palm-trees and beside 
the wells of Elim, or amidst the drought of Marah, 
so long as the same covering protects us, and the same 
pillar of fire burns above us. 

Love Christ, and then the eternity in the heart will 
not be a great aching void, but will be filled with 
the everlasting life which Christ gives, and is. The 
vicissitude will really become the source of freshness 
and progress which God meant it to be. Everything 
which, when made our all-sufficient portion, becomes 
stale and unprofitable, even in its time, will be 
apparelled in celestial light. It shall all be lovely 
and pleasant while it lasts, and its beauty will not 
be saddened by the certainty of its decay, nor its 
empty place a pain when it has passed away. 





350 ECCLESIASTES fon. v. 


Take Christ for Saviour and Friend, your Guide and 
Support through time, and Himself your Eternity and 
Joy, then all discords are reconciled—and ‘all things 
are yours—whether the world, or life, or death, or — 
things present, or things to come; all are yours, and 
ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God's.’ 


LESSONS FOR WORSHIP AND FOR WORK 


‘Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, 
than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they doevil. 2. Be 
not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before 
God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth; therefore let thy words be few. 
3. For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool’s voice is 
known by multitude of words. 4. When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not 
to pay it; for He hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. 
5. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not 
pay. 6. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before 
the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and 
destroy the work of thine hands? 7. For in the multitude of dreams and many 
words there are also divers vanities: but fear thouGod. 8 If thou seest the 
oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a pro- 
vince, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth ; 
and there be higher than they. 9. Moreover, the profit of the earth is for all: the 
king himself is served by the field. 10. He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied 
with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase. Thisis also vanity. 11. 
When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there 
to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes? 12. The 
sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abun- 
dance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.’— EccLEs. v. 1-12. 


THIS passage is composed of two or perhaps three 
apparently disconnected sections. The faults in worship 
referred to in verses 1-7 have nothing to do with the 
legalised robbery of verse 8, nor has the demonstration 
of the folly of covetousness in verses 10-12 any connec- 
tion with either of the preceding subjects. Butthey are 
brought into unity, if they are taken as applications 
in different directions of the bitter truth which the 
writer sets himself to prove runs through all life. ‘All 
is vanity.’ That principle may even be exemplified in 
worship, and the obscure verse 7 which closes the 


vs.1-12] WORSHIP AND WORK 851 


section about the faults of worship seems to be equi- 
valent to the more familiar close which rings the knell 
of so many of men’s pursuits in this book, ‘ This also is 
vanity. It stands in the usual form in verse 10. 

We have in verses 1-7 a warning against the faults 
in worship which make even it to be ‘vanity, unreal 
and empty and fruitless. These are of three sorts, 
arranged, as it were, chronologically. The worshipper 
is first regarded as going to the house of God, then as 
presenting his prayers in it, and then as having left 
it and returned to his ordinary life. The writer has 
cautions to give concerning conduct before, during, 
and after public worship. 

Note that, in all three parts of his warnings, his 
favourite word of condemnation appears as describing 
the vain worship to which he opposes the right 
manner. They who fall into the faults condemned 
are ‘fools.’ If that class includes all who mar their 
worship by such errors, the church which holds them 
had need to be of huge dimensions; for the faults held 
up in these ancient words flourish in full luxuriance 
to-day, and seem to haunt long-established Christianity 
quite as mischievously as they did long-established 
Judaism. If we could banish them from our religious 
assemblies, there would be fewer complaints of the 
poor results of so much apparently Christian prayer 
and preaching. 

Fruitful and acceptable worship begins before it 
begins. Soour passage commences with the demeanour 
of the worshipper on his way to the house of God. 
He is to keep his foot; that is, to go deliberately, 
thoughtfully, with realisation of what he is about to do. 
He is to ‘draw near to hear’ and to bethink himself, 
while drawing near, of what his purpose should be. 


Lo 


352 ECCLESIASTES 





Our forefathers’ Sunday began on Saturday night, and - 
partly for that reason the hallowing influence of it 
ran over into Monday, at all events. What likeli- — 
hood is there that much good will come of worship — 
to people who talk politics or scandal right up to the 
church door? Is reading newspapers in the pews, 
which they tell us in England is not unknown in 
America, a good preparation for worshipping God? — 
The heaviest rain runs off parched ground, unless it 
has been first softened by a gentle fall of moisture. 
Hearts that have no dew of previous meditation to 
make them receptive are not likely to drink in much 
of the showers of blessing which may be falling round 
them. The formal worshipper who goes to the house 
of God because it is the hour when he has always gone; 
the curious worshipper (?) who draws near to hear 
indeed, but to hear a man, not God; and all the other 
sorts of mere outward worshippers who make so large 
@ proportion of every Christian congregation—get the © 
lesson they need, to begin with, in this precept. 

Note, that right preparation for worship is better 
than worship itself, if it is that of ‘fools. Drawing 
near with the true purpose is better than being near 
with the wrong one. Note, too, the reason for the 
vanity of the ‘sacrifice of fools’ is that ‘they know not’; 
and why do they not know, but because they did not 
draw near with the purpose of hearing? Therefore, as 
the last clause of the verse says, rightly rendered, ‘ they 
do evil. All hangs together. No matter how much we 
frequent the house of God, if we go with unprepared 
minds and hearts we shall remain ignorant, and be- 
cause we are so, our sacrifices will be ‘evil.’ If the 
winnowing fan of this principle were applied to our 
decorous congregations, who dress their bodies for 


vs.1-12] WORSHIP AND WORK 853 


church much more carefully than they do their souls, 
what a cloud of chaff would fly off! 

Then comes the direction for conduct in the act of 
worship. The same thoughtfulness which kept the foot 
in coming to, should keep the heart when in, the house 
of God. His exaltation and our lowliness should check 
hasty words, blurting out uppermost wishes, or in any 
way outrunning the sentiments and emotions of pre- 
pared hearts. Not that the lesson would check the 
fervid flow of real desire. There is a type of calm 
worship which keeps itself calm because it is cold. 
Propriety and sobriety are its watchwords—both ad- 
mirable things, and both dear to tepid Christians. 
Other people besides the crowds on Pentecost think 
that men whose lips are fired by the Spirit of God 
are ‘drunken,’ if not with wine, at all events with un- 
wholesome enthusiasm. But the outpourings of a soul 
filled, not only with the sense that God is in heaven 
and we on earth, but also with the assurance that He 
is near to it, and it to Him, are not rash and hasty, 
however fervid. What is condemned is words which 
travel faster than thoughts or feelings, or which pro- 
ceed from hearts that have not been brought into 
patient submission, or from. such as lack reverent 
realisation of God’s majesty ; and such faults may attach 
to the most calm worship, and need not infect the most 
fervent. Those prayers are not hasty which keep step 
with the suppliant’s desires, when these take the time 
from God’s promises. That mouth is not rash which 
waits to speak until the ear has heard. 

‘Let thy words be few.’ The heathen ‘think that 
they shall be heard for much speaking.’ It needs not 
to tell our wants in many words to One who knows 
them altogether, any more than a child needs many 

Z 





354 ECCLESIASTES om. v. | 
when speaking to a father or mother. But ‘few’ must 
be measured by the number of needs and desires. The 
shortest prayer, which is not animated by a conscious-— 
ness of need and a throb of desire, is too long; the — 
longest, which is vitalised by these, is short enough. — 
What becomes of the enormous percentage of public — 
and private prayers, which are mere repetitions, said — 
because they are the right thing to say, because every- 
body always has said them, and not because the man 
praying really wants the things he asks for, or expects — 
to get them any the more for asking? 

Verse 3 gives a reason for the exhortation, ‘A dream — 
comes through a multitude of business’—when a man 
is much occupied with any matter, it is apt to haunt 
his sleeping as well as his waking thoughts. ‘A fool's 
voice comes through a multitude’of words. The dream 
is the consequence of the pressure of business, but the 
fool’s voice is the cause, not the consequence, of the © 
gush of words. What, then, isthe meaning? Probably 
that such a gush of words turns, as it were, the voice — 
of the utterer, for the time being, into that of a fool. 
Voluble prayers, more abundant than devout senti- — 
ments or emotions, make the offerer as a ‘fool’ and 
his prayer unacceptable. 

The third direction refers to conduct after worship. 
It lays down the general principle that vows should 
be paid, and that swiftly. A keen insight into human 
nature suggests the importance of prompt fulfilment 
of the vows; for in carrying out resolutions formed 
under the impulse of the sanctuary, even more than 
in other departments, delays are dangerous. Many a 
young heart touched by the truth has resolved to live 
a Christian life, and has gone out from the house of 
God and put off and put off till days have thickened 


vs. 1-12] WORSHIP AND WORK 855 


into months and years, and the intention has remained 
unfulfilled for ever. Nothing hardens hearts, stiffens 
wills, and sears consciences so much as to be brought 
to the point of melting, and then to cool down into 
the old shape. All good resolutions and spiritual 
convictions may be included under the name of vows; 
and of all it is true that it is better not to have 
formed them, than to have formed and not performed 
them. 

Verses 6 and 7 are obscure. The former seems to 
refer to the case of a man who vows and then asks 
that he may be absolved from his vow by the priest 
or other ecclesiastical authority. His mouth—that is, 
his spoken promise—leads him into sin, if he does not 
fulfil it (comp. Deut. xxiii. 21, 22), He asks release from 
his promise on the ground that it is a sin of weakness. 
The ‘angel’ is best understood as the priest (messenger), 
as in Malachiii. 7. Such a wriggling out of a vow will 
bring God’s anger; for the ‘voice’ which promised what 
the hand will not perform, sins. 

Verse 7 is variously rendered. The Revised Version 
supplies at the beginning, ‘This comes to pass, and 
goes on ‘through the multitude of dreams and vanities 
and many words.’ But this scarcely bears upon the 
context, which requires here a reason against rash 
speech and vows. The meaning seems better given, 
either by the rearranged text which Delitzsch sug- 
gests, ‘In many dreams and many words there are also 
many vanities’ (so, substantially, the Auth. Ver.), or 
as Wright, following Hitzig, etc., has it, ‘In the multi- 
tude of dreams are also vanities, and [in] many words 
[as well].’ The simile of verse 3 is recurred to, and the 
whirling visions of unsubstantial dreams are likened 
to the rash words of voluble prayers in that both are 


356 ECCLESIASTES 

















vanity. Thus the writer reaches his favourite thought, ' 
and shows how vanity infects even devotion. The — 
closing injunction to ‘fear God’ sets in sharp contrast — 
with faulty outward worship the inner surrender and — 
devotion, which will protect against such empty 
hypocrisy. If the heart is right, the lips will not be 
far wrong. 3 
Verses 8 and 9 have no direct connection with the — 
preceding, and their connection with the following 
(vs. 10-12) is slight. Their meaning is dubious. Ac-_ 
cording to the prevailing view now, the abuses of — 
government in verse 8 are those of the period of the ~ 
writer; and the last clauses do not, as might appear at — 
first reading, console sufferers by the thought that | 
God is above rapacious dignitaries, but bids the readers — 
not be surprised if small officials plunder, since the 
same corruption goes upwards through all grades of 
functionaries. With such rotten condition of things © 
is contrasted, in verse 9, the happy state of a people — 
living under a patriarchal government, where the king — 
draws his revenues, not from oppression, but from 
agriculture. The Revised Version gives in its margin — 
this rendering. The connection of these verses with the ; 
following may be that they teach the vanity of riches — 
under such a state of society as they describe. What ; 
is the use of scraping wealth together when hungry ~ 
officials are ‘watching’ to pounce on it? How much 
better to be contented with the modest prosperity of — 
a quiet country life! If the translation of verse 9 in — 
the Authorised Version and the Revised Version is 
retained, there is a striking contrast between the — 
- rapine of the city, where men live by preying on each 
other (as they do still to a large extent, for ‘com- 
merce’ is often nothing better), and the wholesome 


vs. 1-12] WORSHIP AND WORK 857 


natural life of the country, where the kindly earth 
yields fruit, and one man’s gain is not another's loss. 

Thus the verses may be connected with the wise de- 
preciation of money which follows. That low estimate 
is based on three grounds, which great trading nations 
like England and the United States need to have dinned 
into their ears. First, no man ever gets enough of 
worldly wealth. The appetite grows faster than the 
balance at the banker’s. That is so because the desire 
that is turned to outward wealth really needs some- 
thing else, and has mistaken its object. God, not money 
or money’s worth, is the satisfying possession. It is 
so because all appetites, fed on earthly things, increase 
by gratification, and demand ever larger draughts. 
The jaded palate needs stronger stimulants. The 
seasoned opium-eater has to increase his doses to 
produce the same effects. Second, the race after riches 
is a race after a phantom, because the more one has 
of them the more people there spring up to share 
them. The poor man does with one servant; the 
rich man has fifty; and his own portion of his wealth 
is a very small item. His own meal is but a small 
slice off the immense provisions for which he has the 
trouble of paying. It is so, thirdly, because in the 
chase he deranges his physical nature; and when he 
has got his wealth, it only keeps him awake at night 
thinking how he shall guard it and keep it safe. 

That which costs so much to get, which has go little 
power to satisfy, which must always be less than the 
wish of the covetous man, which costs so much to 
keep, which stuffs pillows with thorns, is surely vanity. 
Honest work is rewarded by sweet sleep. The old 
legend told of unslumbering guards who kept the 
treasure of the golden fruit. The millionaire has to 


358 ECCLESIASTES 


live in a barred house, and to be always on the lookout 


lest some combination of speculators should pull down 
his stocks, or some change in the current of population — 
should make his city lots worthless. Black care rides — 


behind the successful man of business. Better to have 


done a day’s work which has earned a night's repose ~ 
than to be the slave of one’s wealth, as all men are © 
who make it their aim and their supreme good. Would ~ 
that these lessons were printed deep on the hearts of 


young Englishmen and Americans! 


NAKED OR CLOTHED? 


‘As he came forth of his mother’s womb, naked shall he return to go as he 
came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his 
hand.’—Ecctes. v. 15. 


*,.. Their works do follow them.’—REvV. xiv. 13. 


It is to be observed that these two sharply contrasted ) 


texts do not refer to the same persons. The former is 


spoken of a rich worldling, the latter of ‘the dead who > 
die in the Lord.’ The unrelieved gloom of the one is — 


as a dark background against which the triumphant 


assurance of the other shines out the more brightly, 


and deepens the gloom which heightens it. The end 


of the man who has to go away from earth naked and — 


empty-handed acquires new tragic force when set 
against the lot of those ‘whose works do follow them.’ 
Well-worn and commonplace as both sets of thought 
may be, they may perhaps be flashed up into new 
vividness by juxtaposition; and if in this sermon we 


have nothing new to say, old truth is not out of place 


till it has been wrought into and influenced our daily 


practice. We shall best gather the lessons of our text 
if we consider what we must leave, what we must 
take, and what we may take. 





v. 15] NAKED OR CLOTHED? 859 


I. What we must leave. 

The Preacher in the context presses home a formid- 
able array of the limitations and imsufficiencies of 
wealth. Possessed, it cannot satisfy, for the appetite 
grows with indulgence. Its increase barely keeps pace 
with the increase of its consumers. It contributes 
nothing to the advantage of its so-called owner except 
‘the beholding of it with his eyes, and the need of 
watching it keeps, them open when he would fain 
sleep. It is often kept to the owner’s hurt, it often 
disappears in unfortunate speculation, and the pos- 
sessor’s heirs are paupers. But, even if all these possi- 
bilities are safely weathered, the man has to die and 
leave it all behind. ‘He shall take nothing of. his 
labour which he can carry away in his hand’; that is 
to say, death separates from all with whom the life of 
the body brings us into connection. The things which 
are no parts of our true selves are ours in a very 
modified sense even whilst we seem to possess them, and 
the term of possession has a definite close. ‘Shrouds 
have no pockets, as the stern old proverb says. How 
many men have lived in the houses which we call ours, 
sat on our seats, walked over our lands, carried in their 
purses the money that is in ours! Is ‘the game worth 
the candle’ when we give our labour for so imperfect 
and brief a possession as at the fullest and the longest 
we enjoy of all earthly good? Surely a wise man will 
set little store by possessions of all which a cold, irre- 
sistible -hand will come to strip him. Surely the life 
is wasted which spends its energy in robing itself in 
garments which will all be stripped from it when the 
naked self ‘ returns to go as he came.’ 

But there are other things than these earthly pos- 
sessions from which death separates us. It carries us 





860 ECCLESIASTES [cH. v. 


far away from the sound of human voices and isolates 
us from living men. Honour and reputation cease to 
be audible. When a prominent man dies, what a 
clatter of conflicting judgments contends over his 
grave! and how utterly he is beyond them all! Praise 
or blame, blessing or banning are equally powerless to 
reach the unhearing ear or to agitate the unbeating 
heart. And when one of our small selves passes out of 
life, we hear no more the voice of censure or of praise, 
of love or of hate. Is it worth while to toil for the 
‘hollow wraith of dying fame,’ or even for the elasp of 
loving hands which have to be loosened so surely and 
so soon ? 

Then again, there are other things which must be left 
behind as belonging only to the present order, and 
connected with bodily life. There will be no scope for 
material work, and much of all our knowledge will be 
antiquated when the light beyond shines in. As we 
shall have occasion to see presently, there is a per- 
manent element in the most material work, and if in 
handling the transient we have been living for the 
eternal, such work will abide; but if we think of the 
spirit in which a sad majority do their daily tasks, 
whether of a more material or of a more intellectual 
sort, we must recognise that a very large proportion 
of all the business of life must come to an end here. 
There is nothing in it that will stand the voyage 
across the great deep, or that can survive in the order 
of things to which we go. What is a man to do in 
another world, supposing there is another world, 
where ledgers and mills are out of date? Or what 
has a scholar or scientist to do in a state of things 
where there is no place for dictionaries and grammars, 
for acute criticism, or for a careful scientific research? 


v. 15] NAKED OR CLOTHED? 861 


Physical science, linguistic knowledge, political wisdom, 
will be antiquated. The poetry which glorifies afresh 
and interprets the present will have lost its meaning. 
Half the problems that torture us here will cease to 
have existence, and most of the other half will have 
been solved by simple change of position. ‘ Whether 
there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be 
knowledge, it shall vanish away’; and it becomes us 
all to bethink ourselves whether there is anything in 
our lives that we can carry away when all that is ‘of 
the earth earthy’ has sunk into nothingness. 

II. What we must take. 

We must take ourselves. It is the same ‘he’ who 
goes ‘naked as he came’; it is the same ‘he’ who 
‘came from his mother’s womb, and is ‘ born again’ as 
it were into a new life, only ‘he’ has by his earthly life 
been developed and revealed. The plant has flowered 
and fruited. What was mere potentiality has become 
fact. There is now fixed character. The transient 
possessions, relationships, and occupations of the 
earthly life are gone, but the man that they have 
made is there. And in the character there are pre- 
dominant habits which insist upon having their sway, 
and a memory of which, as we may believe, there is 
written indelibly all the past. Whatever death may 
strip from us, there is no reason to suppose that it 
touches the consciousness and personal identity, or the 
prevailing set and inclination of our characters. And 
if we do indeed pass into another life ‘not in entire 
forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness,’ but carrying 
a perfected memory and clothed in a garment woven 
of all our past actions, there needs no more to bring 
about a solemn and continuous act of judgment. 

III. What we may take. 





362 ECCLESIASTES (cH. Vv. 


‘Their works do follow them.’ These are the words 
of the Spirit concerning ‘the dead who die in the 
Lord.’ We need not fear marring the great truth that 
‘not by works of righteousness but by His mercy He 
saved us,’ if we firmly grasp the large assurance which 
this text blessedly contains. A Christian man’s works 
are perpetual in the measure in which they harmonise 
with the divine will, in the measure they have eternal 
consequences in himself whatever they may have on 
others. If we live opening our minds and hearts to 
the influx of the divine power ‘that worketh in us 
both to will and to do of His good pleasure,’ then we 
may be humbly sure that these ‘works’ are eternal; 
and though they will never constitute the ground of 
our acceptance, they will never fail to secure ‘a great 
recompence of reward. To many a humble saint there 
will be a moment of wondering thankfulness when he 
sees these his ‘children whom God hath given him’ 
clustered round him, and has to say, ‘Lord, when saw 
I Thee naked, or in prison, and visited Thee?” There 
will be many an apocalypse of grateful surprise in the 
revelations of the heavens. We remember Milton’s 
noble explanation of these great words which may 
well silence our feeble attempts to enforce them— 


‘Thy works and alms and all thy good endeavour 
Stood not behind, nor in the grave were trod, 
But as faith pointed with her golden rod, 
Followed them up to joy and bliss for ever.’ 


So then, life here and yonder will for the Christian 
soul be ae: continuous whole, only that there, while 
‘ their works do follow them, ‘they rest from their 
labours.’ 

| 


FINIS CORONAT OPUS 


* Better is the end of a thing than the beginning.’—Ecozzs. vii. 8. 


Tuts Book of Ecclesiastes is the record of a quest after 
the chief good. The Preacher tries one thing after 
another, and tells his experiences. Amongst these are 
many blunders. It is the final lesson which he would 
have us learn, not the errors through which he reached 
it. ‘The conclusion of the whole matter’ is what he 
would commend to us, and to it he cleaves his way 
through a number of bitter exaggerations and of 
partial truths and of unmingled errors. The text is 
one of a string of paradoxical sayings, some of them 
very true and beautiful, some of them doubtful, but all 
of them the kind of things which used-up men are wont 
to say—the salt which is left in the pool when the tide 
is gone down. The text is the utterance of a wearied 
man who has had so many disappointments, and seen 
so many fair beginnings overclouded, and so many 
ships going out of port with flying flags and foundering 
at sea, that he thinks nothing good till it is ended; little 
worth beginning—rest and freedom from all external 
cares and duties best; and, best of all, to be dead, and 
have done with the whole coil. Obviously, ‘the end 
of a thing’ here is the parallel to ‘the day of death’ in 
verse 1, which is there preferred to ‘the day of one’s 
birth.’ That is the godless, worn-out worlding’s view of 
the matter, which is infinitely sad, and absolutely untrue. 

But from another point of view there is a truth in 
these words. The life which is lived for God, which is 
rooted in Christ, a life of self-denial, of love, of purity, of 


strenuous ‘ pressing towards the mark, is better in its 
868 





864 ECCLESIASTES (cH. vin. 


‘end’ than in its ‘beginning.’ To such a life we are all 
called, and it is possible for each. May my poor words 
help some of us to make it ours. 

I. Then our life has an end. 

It is hard for any of us to realise this in the midst of 
the rush and pressure of daily duty; and it is not alto- 
gether wholesome to think much about it; but it is still 
more harmful to put it out of our sight, as so many 
of us do, and to go on habitually as if there would 
never come a time when we shall cease to be where we 
have been so long, and when there will no more arise 
the daily calls to transitory occupations. The thought 
of the certainty and nearness of that end has often 
become a stimulus to wild, sensuous living, as the 
history of the relaxation of morality in pestilences, 
and in times when war stalked through the land, has 
abundantly shown. ‘Let us eat and drink, for to- 
morrow we die,’ is plainly a way of reasoning that 
appeals to the average man. But the entire forgetful- 
ness that there is an end is no less harmful, and is apt 
to lead to over-indulgence in sensuous desires as the 
other extreme. Perhaps the young need more especi- 
ally to be recalled to the thought of the ‘end,’ because 
they are more especially likely to forget it, and because 
it is specially worth their while to remember it. They 
have still the long stretch before the ‘end’ before them, 
to make of it what they will. Whereas for us who are 
further on in the course, there is less time and oppor- 
tunity to shape our path with a view to its close, 
and to those of us in old age, there is but little need to 
preach r¢émembrance of what has come so close to us. 
It is to the young man that the Preacher proffers his 
final advice, to ‘rejoice in his health, and to walk in the 
ways of his heart, and in the sight of his eyes,’ but 


v. 8] FINIS CORONAT OPUS 865 
withal to know that ‘for these God will bring him into 


judgment.’ 

And in that counsel is involved the thought that ‘the 
end which is better than the beginning’ is neither old 
age, with its limitations and compulsory abstinences, 
nor death, which is, as the dreary creed of the book in its 
central portions believes it to be, the close of all things, 
but, beyond these, the state in which men will reap as 
they have sown, and inherit what they have earned. 
It is that condition which gives all its importance to 
death—the porter who opens the door into a future 
life of reeompence. 

II. The end will, in many respects, not be better than 
the beginning. 

Put side by side the infant and the old man. Think 
of the undeveloped strength, the smooth cheek, the 
ruddy complexion, the rejoicing in physical well-being, 
of the one, with the failing senses, the tottering limbs, 
the lowered vitality, the many pains and aches, of the 
other. In these respects the end is worse than the 
beginning. Or go a step further onwards in life, and 
think of youth, with its unworn energy, and the wearied 
longing for rest which comes at the end; of youth, with 
its quick, open receptiveness for all impressions, and the 
horny surface of callousness which has overgrown the 
mind of the old; of youth, with its undeveloped powers 
and endless possibilities, which in the old have become 
rigid and fixed; of youth, with the rich gift before it of 
a continent of time, which in the old has been washed 
away by the ocean, till there is but a crumbling bank 
still to stand on; of youth, with its wealth of hopes, and 
of the hopes of the old, which are solemn ventures, few 
and scanty—and then say if the end is not worse than 


the beginning. 





366 ECCLESIASTES (om. vir. 


And if we go further, and think of death as the end, 
is it not in a very real and terrible sense, loss, loss? It 
is loss to be taken out of the world, to ‘leave the warm 
precincts and the cheerful day, to lose friends and 
lovers, and to be banned into a dreary land. Yet, 
further, the thought of the end as being a state of 
retribution strikes upon all hearts as being solemn 
and terrible. 7 

III. Yet the end may be better. 

The sensuous indulgence which Ecclesiastes preaches 
in its earlier portions will never lead to such an end. 
It breeds disgust of life, as the examples of rouwés in all 
ages, and to-day, abundantly shows. Epicurean selfish- 
ness leads to weariness of all effort and work. If we 
are unwise enough to make either of these our guides 
in life, the only desirable end will be the utter cessation 
of being and consciousness. 

But there is a better sense in which this paradoxical 
saying is simple truth, and that sense is one which it is 
possible for us all to realise. What sort of end would 
that be, the brightness of which would far outshine 
the joy when a man-child is born into the world? 
Would it not be a birth into a better life than that 
which fills and often disturbs the ‘threescore years 
and ten’ here? Would it not be an end to a course in 
which all our nature would be fully developed and all 
opportunities of growth and activity had been used to 
the full? which had secured all that we could possess? 
which had happy memories and calm hopes? Would 
it not be an end which brought with it communion 
with the Highest—joys that could never fade, activities 
that could never weary? Surely the Christian heaven 
is better than earth; and that heaven may be ours. 

That supreme and perfect end will be reached by us 


v.8] MISUSED RESPITE 867 


through faith in Christ, and through union by faith with 
Him. If we are joined to the Lord and are one with 
Him, our end in glory will be as much better than this 
our beginning on earth as the full glory of a summer’s 
day transcends the fogs and frosts of dreary winter. 
‘The path of the just is as the shining light, which 
shineth more and more unto the perfect day.’ 

If the end is not better than the beginning, it will be 
infinitely worse. Golden opportunities will be gone; 
wasted years will be irrevocable. Bright lights will be 
burnt out; sin will be graven on the memory; remorse 
will be bitter; evil habits which cannot be gratified 
will torment; a wearied soul, a darkened understand- 
ing, a rebellious heart, will make the end awfully, 
infinitely, always worse than the beginning. From all 
these Jesus Christ can save us; and, full as He fills the 
cup of life as we travel along the road, He keeps the 
best wine till the last, and makes ‘the end of a thing 
better than the beginning.’ 


MISUSED RESPITE 


‘Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the 
heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.’—HcoLgs. viii. 11. 


WHEN the Pharaoh of the Exodus saw there was 
respite, he hardened his heart. Abject in his fear 
before Moses, he was ready to promise anything; in- 
solent in his pride, he swallows down his promises as 
soon as fear is eased, his repentance and his retracta- 
tion of it combined to add new weights about his neck. 
He was but a conspicuous example of a universal fault. 
Every nation, I suppose, has its proverb scoffing at the 
contrast between the sick man’s vow and the recovered 





368 ECCLESIASTES (cH. vim. © 


man’s sins. The bitter moralist of the Old Testament 
was sure not to let such an instance of man’s incon- 
ceivable levity pass unnoticed. His settled habit of 
dragging to light the seamy side of human nature was 
sure to fall on this illustration of it as congenial food. 
He has wrapped up here in these curt, bitter words a 
whole theory of man’s condition, of God’s providence, 
of its abuse, and of the end to which it all tends. 

I. Note the delay in executing sentence. 

Every ‘evil work’ is already sentenced. ‘He that 
believeth not,’ said Christ, ‘is condemned already’; and 
that is one case of a general truth. The text writes 
the sentence as passed, though the execution is for a 
time suspended. What is the underlying fact expressed 
by this metaphor? God’s thorough knowledge of, and 
displeasure at, every evil. When one sees vile things 
done on earth, and no bolt coming out of the clear sky, 
it is not easy to believe that all the foulness is known 
to God; but His eye reaches further than He wills to 
stretch His arm. He sitsa silent Onlooker and beholds; 
the silence does not argue indifference. The sentence 
is pronounced, but the execution is delayed. It is not 
wholly delayed, for there are consequences which 
immediately dog our evil deeds, and are, as it were, 
premonitions of a yet more complete penalty. But in 
the present order of things the connection between a 
man’s evil-doing and suffering is, on the whole, slight, 
obscure, and partial. Evil triumphs; goodness not 
seldom suffers. If one thinks for a moment of the 
manifold evils of the world, which swathe it, as it 
were, in an atmosphere of woe—the wars, the slavery, 
the oppressions, the private sorrows—and then thinks 
that there is a God who lets all these go on from 
generation to generation, we seem to be in the presence 


v.11) | MISUSED RESPITE 869 


of a mystery of mysteries. The Psalmist of old ex- 
claimed in adoring wonder, ‘Thy judgments are a great 
deep’; but the absence of His judgments seems to 
open a profounder abyss into which even the great 
mountains of His righteousness appear in danger of 
falling. 

II. The reasons for this delay. 

It is not only a mystery, but it is a ‘mystery of love.’ 
Wecansee buta little way into it, but we can see so far 
as to be sure that the apparent passivity of God, which 
looks like leaving evil to work its unhindered will, is 
the silence of a God who ‘doth not willingly afflict,’ 
and is ‘slow to anger,’ because He is perfect love. 

The ground of necessity for the delay in executing 
the sentence lies, partly, in the probationary character 
of this present life. If evil-doing was always followed 
by swift retribution, obedience would be only the 
obedience of fear, and God does not desire such 
obedience. It would be impossible that testing could 
go on at all if at every instant the whole of the con- 
sequences of our actions were being realised. Sucha 
condition of things is unthinkable, and would be as 
confusing, in the moral sphere, as if harvest weather 
and spring weather were going on together. Again, 
the great reason why sentence against an evil work is 
not executed speedily lies in God’s own heart, and His 
desire to win us to Himself by benefits. He does not 
seek enforced obedience; He neither desires our being 
wedded to evil, nor our being weighed upon by the 
consequences of our sin, and so He holds back His 
hand. It is to be remembered that He not merely does 
thus restrain the forthcoming of His hand of judgment, 
but, instead of it, puts forth a hand of blessing. He 
moves around us wooing us to Himself, and, in patience 

2A 


370 ECCLESIASTES 





possessing His spirit, marks all our sins, but loves and — 


blesses still. He gives us the vineyard, though we do 
not give Him the fruit. Still He is not angry, but 
sends His messengers, and we stone them. Still He 
waits: we go on heaping year upon year of rebellious 
forgetfulness, and no lightning flashes from His eye, 
no exclamation of wearied-out patience, comes from 
His lips, no rush of the sudden arrow from His long- 
stretched bow. The endless patience of God has no 
explanation but only this, that He loves us too well to 
leave any means untried to bring us to Him, and that 
He lingers round us to win our hearts. O rare and 
unspeakable love, the patient love of the patient God! — 

III. The abuse of this delay. 

We have the knack of turning God’s pure gifts into 
poison, and practise a devilish chemistry by which we 
distil venom from the flowers of Eden and the roses 
of the garden of God. I don’t suppose that to many 
men the respite which marks God's dealing with them 
actually tends to doubts of His righteousness, or of His 
power, or of His being. We have evidence enough of — 
these; and the apparently counter evidence, arising 
from the impunity of evil-doers, is fairly enough laid 
aside by our moral instincts and consciousness, and 
by the consideration that the mighty sweep of God's 
providence is too great for us to decide on the whole > 
circle by the small portion of the circumference which 
we have seen. But what most men do is simply that 
they permit impunity to deaden their sense of right 
and wrong, and go on in their course without any 
serious thought of God’s blessings, to jostle Him out 
of their mind; they ‘despise the riches of His long- 
suffering goodness, and never suffer it to ‘lead them to 
repentance. To the unthinking minds of most of us, 


v.11] MISUSED RESPITE 871 


the long continuance of impunity lulls us into a dream 
of its perpetuity. Man’s godless ingratitude is as deep 
a mystery as is God’s loving patience. It is strange 
that, with such constant failure of His love to win, God 
should still persevere in it. For more than seventy 
times seven He persists in forgiving the rebellious child 
who sins against Him, and for more than seventy times 
seven the child persists in the abuse of the Father's 
love, which still remains—an abuse of sin above all sins. 

IV. The end of the delay. 

The sentence 7s passed. It is impossible that it should 
not be executed. When God has done all, and sees that 
the point of hopelessness is reached, or when the time 
has for other reasons come, then He lets the sentence 
take effect. He kept back the destroying angels from 
Sodom, but He sent them forth at last. There is a 
point in the history of nations and of men when 
iniquity is ‘full, and when God sees that it is best, on 
world-wide grounds or personal ones, to end it. So © 
there come for nations and for individuals crises; and 
the law for the divine working is,‘A short work will 
the Lord make on the earth.’ For long years Noah 
was building the ark, and exposed to the scoffs of a 
generation whose sentence had been pronounced and 
not yet executed ; but the day came when he entered 
into its covert, and ‘the flood came and destroyed them 
all.” For generations He would fain have gathered the 
people of Jerusalem to His bosom ‘as a hen gathereth 
her chickens under her wings, and they would not’; 
but the day came when the Roman soldiers cast their 
torches into the beautiful house where their fathers 
had praised Him, and sinned against Him, and it was 
left unto them desolate. Let us not be high-minded 
nor victims of our levity and inconsideratenegs, but fear. 





872 ECCLESIASTES (oH. x. 


Let us remember too that the intensity of the execu- 
tion is aggravated by all the sins committed during 
the delay. By them we ‘treasure wrath against the 
day of wrath. He says to His angels at last ‘Now, 
and the sword falls, and justice is done. ‘The mills of 
God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.’ 
The sum of the whole matter is, every evil of ours is 
sentenced already; the punishment is delayed for our 
sins, and because Christ has died. God is wooing our 
hearts, and trying to win us to love Him by the holding 
back of the sentence which we are daily abusing. Shall 
we not accept His forbearance and take His gifts as 
tokens of the patient tenderness of His heart? Or are 
we to be like ‘the brutes that perish,’ knowing neither 
the hand that feeds them, nor the hand that kills them. 
The delay in rendering ‘the just reeompence of reward’ 
only aggravates its weight when it falls. As in some 
levers, the slower the motion, the greater the force of 
the lift. 


FENCES AND SERPENTS 


*. « e Whoso breaketh an‘hedge, a serpent shall bite him.’—Hoonzs. x. 8. 


Wuat is meant here is, probably, not such a hedge as 
we are accustomed to see, but a dry-stone wall, or, 
perhaps, an earthen embankment, in the crevices of 
which might lurk a snake to sting the careless hand. 
The connection and purpose of the text are somewhat 
obscure. It is one of a string of proverb-like sayings 
which all seem to be illustrations of the one thought 
that every kind of work has its own appropriate and 
peculiar peril. So, says the Preacher, if a man is dig- 
ging a pit, the sides of it may cave in and he may go 


v. 8] FENCES AND SERPENTS 378 


down. If he is pulling down a wall he may get stung. 
If he is working in a quarry there may be a fall of 
rock. If he is a woodman the tree he is felling may 
crush him. What then? Is the inference to be, Sit 
still and do nothing, because you may get hurt what- 
ever you do? Byno means. The writer of this book 
hates idleness very nearly as much as he does what he 
calls ‘folly,’ and his inference is stated in the next verse 
—‘ Wisdom is profitable to direct. That is to say, 
since all work has its own dangers, work warily, and 
with your brains as well as your muscles, and do not 
put your hand into the hollow in the wall, until you 
have looked to see whether there are any snakes in it. 
Is that very wholesome maxim of prudence all that 
is meant to be learned? I think not. The previous 
clause, at all events, embodies a well-known metaphor 
of the Old Testament. ‘He that diggeth a pit shall fall 
into it, often occurs as expressing the retribution in 
kind that comes down on the cunning plotter against 
other men’s prosperity, and the conclusion that wisdom 
suggests in that application of the sentence is, not ‘ Dig 
judiciously, but ‘Do not dig at all.’ And soin my text 
the ‘wall’ may stand for the limitations and boundary- 
lines of our lives, and the inference that wisdom sug- 
gests in that application of the saying is not ‘Pull 
down judiciously, but ‘ Keep the fence up, and be sure 
you keep on the right side of it. For any attempt to 
pull it down—which being interpreted is, to transgress 
the laws of life which God has enjoined—is sure to 
bring out the hissing snake with its poison. 

Now it is in that aspect that I want to look at the 
words before us. 

I. First of all, let us take that thought which under- 
lies my text—that all life is given us rigidly walled up. 





a 


374 ECCLESIASTES 


The first thing that the child learns is, that it must 
not do what it likes. The last lesson that the old man 
has to learn is, you must do what you ought. And be- 
tween these two extremes of life we are always making 
attempts to treat the world as an open common, on 
which we may wander at our will. And before we 
have gone many steps, some sort of keeper or other 
meets us and says to us, ‘Trespassers, back again to 
the road!’ Life is rigidly hedged in and limited. To 
live as you like is the prerogative of a brute. To live 
as you ought, and to recognise and command by obey- 
ing the laws and limitations stamped upon our very 
nature and enjoined by our circumstances, is the free- 
dom and the glory of aman. There are limitations, I 
say—fences on all sides. Men put up their fences; and 
they are often like the wretched wooden hoardings 
that you sometimes see limiting the breadth of a road. 
But in regard to these conventional limitations and 
regulations, which own no higher authority or law- 
giver than society and custom, you must make up your 
mind even more certainly than in regard of loftier 
laws, that if you meddle with them, there will be 
plenty of serpents coming out to hiss and bite. No 
man that defies the narrow maxims and petty re- 
strictions of conventional ways, and sets at nought the 
opinions of the people round about him, but must make 
up his mind for backbiting and slander and opposition 
' of all sorts. It is the price that we pay for obeying at 
first hand the laws of God and caring nothing for the 
conventionalities of men. . 

But apart from that altogether, let me just remind 
you, in half a dozen sentences, of the various limita- 
tions or fences which hedge up our lives on every side. 
There are the obligations which we owe, and the rela~ 


v. 8] FENCES AND SERPENTS 375 


tions in which we stand, to the outer world, the laws of 
physical life, and all that touches the external and the 
material. There are the relations in which we stand, 
and the obligations which we owe, to ourselves. And 
God has so made us as that obviously large tracts of 
every man’s nature are given to him on purpose to be 
restrained, curbed, coerced, and sometimes utterly 
crushed and extirpated. God gives us our impulses 
under lock and key. All our animal desires, all our 
natural tendencies, are held on condition that we exer- 
cise control over them, and keep them well within the 
rigidly marked limits which He has laid down, and 
which we can easily find out. There are, further, the 
relations in which we stand, and the obligations and 
limitations, therefore, under which we come, to the 
people round about us. High above them all, and in 
some sense including them all, but loftier than these, 
there is the all-comprehending relation in which we 
stand to God, who is the fountain of all obligations, the 
source and aim of all duty, who encompasses us on 
every side, and whose will makes the boundary walls 
within which alone it is safe for a man to live. 

We sometimes foolishly feel that a life thus hedged 
up, limited by these high boundaries on either side, must 
be uninteresting, monotonous, or unfree. It is not so. 
The walls are blessings, like the parapet on a mountain 
road, that keeps the travellers from toppling over the 
face of the cliff. They are training-walls, as our hydro- 
graphical engineers talk about, which, built in the bed 
of a river, wholesomely confine its waters and make a 
good scour which gives life, instead of letting them 
vaguely wander and stagnate across great fields of 
mud. Freedom consists in keeping willingly within 
the limits which God has traced, and anything else is 


ae 
| if . 


376 ECCLESIASTES (oH. x. 


not freedom but licence and rebellion, and at bottom 
servitude of the most abject type. 

II. So, secondly, note that every attempt to break > 
down the limitations brings poison into the life. 

We live in a great automatic system which, by its 
own operation, largely avenges every breach of law. I 
need not remind you, except in a word, of the way in 
which the transgression of the plain physical laws 
stamped upon our constitutions avenges itself; but the 
certainty with which disease dogs all breaches of the 
laws of health is but a type in the lower and material 
universe of the far higher and more solemn certainty 
with which ‘the soul that sinneth, it shall die. Wher- 
ever a man sets himself against any of the laws of this 
material universe, they make short work of him. We 
command them, as I said, by obeying them; and the 
difference between the obedience and the breach of 
them is the difference between the engineer standing 
on his engine and the wretch that is caught by it as it 
rushes over the rails. But that is but a parable of the 
higher thing which I want to speak to you about. 

The grosser forms of transgression of the plain laws 
of temperance, abstinence, purity, bring with them, 
in like manner, a visible and palpable punishment in 
the majority of cases. Whoso pulls down the wall of 
temperance, a serpent will bite him. Trembling hands, 
broken constitutions, ruined reputations, vanished am- 
bitions, wasted lives, poverty, shame, and enfeebled 
will, death—these are the serpents that bite, in many 
cases, the transgressor. I have a man in my eye at this 
moment that used to sit in one of these pews, who 
came into Manchester a promising young man, a child 
of many prayers, with the ball at his foot, in one of 
your great warehouses, the only hope of his house, 


v. 8] ITENCES AND SERPENTS 877 


professedly a Christian. He began to tamper with the 
wall. First a tiny little bit of stone taken out that did 
not show the daylight through; then a little bigger, 
and a bigger. And the serpent struck its fangs into 
him, and if you saw him now, he is a shambling wreck, 
outside of society, and, as we sometimes tremblingly 
think, beyond hope. Young men! ‘whoso breaketh 
an hedge, a serpent shall bite him.’ 

In like manner there are other forms of ‘sins of the 
flesh avenged in kind,’ which I dare not speak about 
more plainly here. Isee many young men in my con- 
gregation, many strangers in this great city, living, 
I suppose, in lodgings, and therefore without many 
restraints. If you were to take a pair of compasses 
and place one leg of them down at the Free Trade Hall, 
and take a circle of half a mile round there, you would 
get a cavern of rattlesnakes. You know what I mean. 
Low theatres, low music-halls, casinos, haunts of yet 
viler sorts—there the snakes are, hissing and writhing 
and ready to bite. Do not ‘put your hand on the hole 
of the asp. Take care of books, pictures, songs, com- 
panions that would lead you astray. Oh for a voice 
to stand at some doors that I know in Manchester, and 
peal this text into the ears of the fools, men and 
women, that go in there! 

I heard only this week of one once in a good position 
in this city, and in early days, I believe, a member of 
my own congregation, begging in rags from door to 
door. And the reason was, simply, the wall had been 
pulled down and the serpent had struck. It always 
does; not with such fatal external effects always, but 
be ye sure of this, ‘God is not mocked; “whatsoever a 
man,” or a woman either, “soweth, that shall he also 
reap.”’ For remember that there are other ways of 





378 ECCLESIASTES 


pulling down walls than these gross and palpable . 
transgressions with the body; and there are other sorts 
of retributions which come with unerring certainty be- — 
sides those that can be taken notice of by others. Ido 
not want to dwell upon these at any length, but let me 
just remind you of one or two of them. ; 

Some serpents’ bites inflame, some paralyse; and 
one or other of these two things—either an inflamed 
conscience or a palsied conscience—is the result of 
all wrongdoing. I do not know which is the worst. 
There are men and women now in this chapel, sitting 
listening to me, perhaps half interested, without the 
smallest suspicion that Iam talking about them. The 
serpent’s bite has led to the torpor of their consciences. 
Which is the worse—to loathe my sin and yet to find 
its slimy coils round about me, so that I cannot break 
it, or to have got to like it and to be perfectly comfort- 
able in it, and to have no remonstrance within when I 
do it? Be sure of this, that every transgression and 
disobedience acts immediately upon the conscience of 
the doer, sometimes to stir that conscience into agonies 
of gnawing remorse, more often to lull it into a fatal 
slumber, 

I do not speak of the retributions which we heap 
upon ourselves in loading our memories with errors 
and faults, in polluting them often with vile imagina- 
tions, or in laying up there a lifelong series of actions, 
none of which have ever had a trace of reference to 
God in them. I do not speak, except in a sentence, of 
the retribution which comes from the habit of evil 
which weighs upon men, and makes it all but impossible 
for them ever to shake off their sin. I do not speak, 
except in a sentence, of the perverted relations to God, 
the incapacity of knowing Him, the disregard, and even 


v. 8] FENCES AND SERPENTS 379 


sometimes the dislike, of the thought of Him which 
steal across the heart of the man that lives in evil and 
sin; but I put all into two words—every sin that I do 
tells upon myself, inasmuch as its virus passes into my 
blood as gwilt and as habit. And then I remind you 
of what you say you believe, that beyond this world 
there lies the solemn judgment-seat of God, where you 
and I have to give account of our deeds. O brother, 
be sure of this, ‘whoso breaketh an hedge’—here and 
now, and yonder also—‘a serpent shall bite him’! 

That is as far as my text carries me. It has nothing 
more to say. AmIto shut the book and have done? 
There is only one system that has anything more to 
say, and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

III. And so, passing from my text, I have to say, 
lastly, All the poison may be got out of your veins if 
you like. 

Our Lord used this very same metaphor under a 
different aspect, and with a different historical applica- 
tion, when He said, ‘ As Moses lifted up the serpent in 
the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 
that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but 
have eternal life.’ 

There is Christ’s idea of the condition of this world 
of ours—a camp of men lying bitten by serpents and 
drawing near to death. What I have been speaking 
about, in perhaps too abstract terms, is the condition 
of each one of us. Itis hard to get people, when they 
are gathered by the hundred to listen to a sermon flung 
out in generalities, to realise it. If I could get you one 
by one, and ‘buttonhole’ you; and instead of the plural 
‘you’ use the singular ‘thou,’ perhaps I could reach 
you. But let me ask you to try and realise each for 
himself that this serpent bite, as the issue of pulling 


380 ECCLESIASTES (on. x. 


down the wall, is true about each soul in this place, 
and that Christ endorsed the representation. How 
are we to get this poison out of the blood? Reform 
your ways? Yes; I say that too; but reforming 
the life will deliver from the poison in the character, 
when you cure hydrophobia by washing the patient's 
skin, and not till then. It is all very well to repaper 
your dining-rooms, but it is very little good doing that 
if the drainage is wrong. It is the drainage that is 
wrong with us all. A man cannot reform himself 
down to the bottom of his sinful being. If he could, it 
does not touch the past. That remains the same. If 
he could, it does not affect his relation toGod. Repent- 
ance—if it were possible apart from the softening 
influence of faith in Jesus Christ —repentance alone 
would not solve the problem. So far as men can see, 
and so far as all human systems have declared, ‘ What 
I have written I have written.’ There is no erasing it. 
The irrevocable past stands stereotyped forever. Then 
comes in this message of forgiveness and cleansing, 
which is the very heart of all that we preachers have 
to say, and has been spoken to most of you so often 
that it is almost impossible to invest it with any kind 
of freshness or power. But once more I have to preach 
to you that Christ has received into His own inmost 
life and self the whole gathered consequences of a 
world’s sin; and by the mystery of His sympathy, and 
the reality of His mysterious union with us men, He, 
the sinless Son of God, has been made sin for us, that 
we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. 
The brazen serpent lifted on the pole was in the like- 
ness of the serpent whose poison slew, but there was 
no poison in it. Christ has come, the sinless Son of 
God, for you and me. He has died on the Cross, the 


-y8) THE WAY TOTHECITY 881 


Sacrifice for every man’s sin, that every man’s wound 
might be healed, and the poison cast out of his veins. 
He has bruised the malignant, black head of the snake 
with His wounded heel; and because He has been 
wounded, we are healed of our wounds. For sin and 
death launched their last dart at Him, and, like some 
venomous insect that can sting once and then must 
die, they left their sting in His wounded heart, and 
have none for them that put their trust in Him. 

So, dear brother, here is the simple condition—namely, 
faith. One look of the languid eye of the poisoned 
man, howsoever bloodshot and dim it might be, and 
howsoever nearly veiled with the film of death, was 
enough to make him whole. The look of our con- 
sciously sinful souls to that dear Christ that has died 
for us will take away the guilt, the power, the habit, 
the love of evil; and, instead of blood saturated with 
the venom of sin, there will be in our veins the Spirit of 
life in Christ, which will ‘make us free from the law of 
sin and death.’ ‘Look unto Him and be ye saved, all 
the ends of the earth!’ 


THE WAY TO THE CITY 


‘The labour of the foolish wearieth every one of them, because he knoweth nots 
how to go to the city. — Ecos. x. 15. 


On the surface this seems to be merely a piece of 
homely, practical sagacity, conjoined with one of the 
bitter things which Ecclesiastes is fond of saying about 
those whom he calls ‘fools.’ It seems to repeat, under 
another metaphor, the same idea which has been pre- 
sented in a previous verse, where we read: ‘If the 
iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must 
he put to more strength; but wisdom is profitable to 


382 ECCLESIASTES 


direct.’ That is to say, skill is better than strength; 
brain saves muscle; better sharpen your axe than put 
yourself into a perspiration, hitting fierce blows with 
a blunt one. The prerogative of wisdom is to guide 
brute force. And so in my text the same general 
idea comes under another figure. Immense effort may 
end in nothing but tired feet if the traveller does not 
know his road. A man lost in the woods may run till 
he drops, and find himself at night in the place from 
which he started in the morning. The path must be 
known, and the aim clear, if any good is to come of 
effort. 

That phrase, ‘how to go to the city,’ seems to be a 
kind of proverbial comparison for anything that is 
very plain and conspicuous, just as our forefathers 
used to say about any obvious truth, that it was ‘as 
plain as the road to London town. The road to the 
capital is sure to be a well-marked one, and he must 
be a fool indeed who cannot see that. So our text, 
though on the surface, as I say, is simply a sarcasm 
and a piece of homely, practical sagacity, yet, like 
almost all the sayings in this Book of Ecclesiastes, it 
has a deeper meaning than appears on the surface; 
and may be applied in higher and more important 
directions. It carries withit large truths, and enshrines 
in a vivid metaphor bitter experiences which, I sup- 
pose, we can all coufirm. 

I. We consider, first, the toil that tires. 

‘The labour wearies every one of them.’ The wird 
translated ‘labour’ seems to carry with it both the idea 
of effort and of trouble. Or to recur to a familiar 
distinction in modern English, the word really covers 
both the ground of work and of worry. And it isa 
sad and'solemn thought that a word with that double 





v.15) THE WAY TO THE CITY 383 


element in it should be the one which is most truly 
applicable to the efforts of a large majority of men. 
I suppose there never was a time in the world’s history 
when life went so fast as it does in these great centres 
of civilisation and commerce in which you and I live. 
And it is awful to have to think that the great mass 
of it all ends in nothing else but tired limbs and 
exhaustion. That is a truth to be verified by ex- 
perience, and I am bold to believe that every man 
and woman in this chapel now can say more or less 
distinctly ‘Amen!’ to the assertion that every life, 
except a distinctly and supremely religious one, is 
worry and work without adequate satisfying result, 
and with no lasting issue but exhaustion. 

Let us begin at the bottom. For instance, take a 
man who has avowedly flung aside the restraints of 
right and wrong and conscience, and does things 
habitually that he knows to be wrong. Every sin is a 
blunder as well as a crime. No man who aims at an 
end through the smoke of hell gets the end that he 
aims at. Or if he does, he gets something that takes 
all the gilt off the gingerbread, and all the sweetness 
out of the success. They put a very evil-tasting in- 
gredient into spirits of wine to prevent its being drunk. 
The cup that sin reaches to a man, though the wine 
moveth itself aright and is very pleasant to look at 
before being tasted, cheats with methylated spirits. 
Men and women take more pains and trouble to damn 
themselves than ever they do to have their souls saved. 
The end of all work, which begins with tossing con- 
science on one side, is simply this—‘ The labour of the 
foolish wearieth every one of them.’ 

Take a step higher—a respectable, well-to-do Man- 
chester man, successful in business. He has made it 


; se ee 






384 ECCLESIASTES . (omx. 


his aim to build up a large concern, and has succeeded. 
He has a fine house, carriages, greenhouses; he has 
‘J.P.’ to his name; he stands high in credit and on 
‘Change. His name is one that gives respectability to 
anything that it is connected with. Has he ‘come to 
the city’? Has he got what he thought he would get 
when he began his career? He has succeeded in his 
immediate and smaller purpose; has that immediate 
and smaller purpose succeeded in bringing him what 
he thought it would bring him? Or has he fallen a 
victim to those— 
‘juggling fiends... 

That palter with us in a double sense; 

That keep the word of promise to the ear, 

And break it to the hope?’ 
They tell us that if you put down in one column the 
value of the ore that has been extracted from all the 
Australian gold-mines, and in another the amount that 
it has cost to get it, the latter sum will exceed the 
former. There are plenty of people in Manchester who 
have put more down into the pit from which they dig 
their wealth than ever they will get out of it. And 
their labour, too, leaves a very dark and empty aching 
centre in their lives, ‘and wearieth every one of them.” 

And so I might go the whole round. We students, 

so long as our pursuit of knowledge has not in it as 
supreme, directing motive, and ultimate aim and issue, 
the glory and the service of God, come under the lash 
of the same condemnation as those grosser and lower 
forms of life of which I have been speaking. But 
wherever we look, if there be not in the heart and in 
the life a supreme regard to God and a communion 
with Him, then this characteristic is common to all the 
courses, that, whilst they may each meet some imme-— 


v. 15] THE WAY TO THE CITY 385 


diate and partial necessity of our natures, none of 
them is adequate for the whole circumference of a 
man’s being, nor any of them able, during the whole 
duration of that being, to be his satisfaction and his 
rest. Therefore, I say, all toil, however successful to 
the view of a shorter range of vision, and however 
noble—excluding the noblest of all—all toil that ends 
only in securing that which perishes with the using, 
or that which we leave behind us here when we pass 
hence, is condemned for folly and labour that wearies 
the men who are fools enough to surrender them- 
selves to it. 

I need not remind you of the wonderful variety of 
metaphor under which that threadbare thought, which 
yet it is so hard for us to believe and make operative 
in our lives, is represented to us in Scripture. Just let 
me recall one or two of them in the briefest way. 
‘Why do ye spend your money for that which is not 
bread, and your labour for that which profiteth not?’ 
‘They have hewn for themselves cisterns, broken 
cisterns that can hold no water. ‘Their webs shall 
not become garments. That may want a word of 
explanation. The metaphor is this. You are all like 
spiders spinning carefully and diligently your web. 
There is not substance enough in it to make a coat out 
of. You will never cover yourselves with the product 
of your own brains or your own efforts. There is no 
clothing in the spider’s webs of a godless life. 

Ah! brother, all these earthly aims which some of 
my friends listening to me now have for the sole 
aims of their lives, are as foolish and as inadequate to 
accomplish that which is sought for by them, as it 
would be to seek to quench raging thirst by lifting to 
the lips a golden cup that is empty. Some of us have 

2B 


386 ECCLESIASTES (cH. x. 


a whole sideboard full of such, and vary our pursuits 
according to inclination and task. Some of us have 
only one such, but they are all empty, and the lip is 
parched after the cup has been lifted to it as it was 
before. 

II. And so, consider now, secondly, the foolish ignor- 
ance that makes the toil tiresome. 

The metaphor of my text says that the reason why 
the ‘ fool’ is so wearied after the day’s march is that he 
does not in the morning settle where he is going, and 
how he is to get there; and so, having started to go 
nowhither, he has got where he started for. He ‘does 
not know how to go to the city’ —which, being trans- 
lated into plain and unmetaphorical English, is just 
this, that many men wreck their lives for want of 
a clear sight of their true aim, and of the way to 
secure it. 

There is nothing more tragical than the absence, in 
the great bulk of men, of anything like deliberate, 
definite views as to their aim in life, and the course to 
be taken to secure it. There are two things obviously 
necessary for success in any enterprise. One is, that 
there shall be the most definite and clear conception of 
what is aimed at; and the other, that there shall be a 
wisely considered plan to get at it. Unless there be 
these, if you go at random, running a little way fora 
moment in this direction, and then heading about 
and going in the other, you cannot expect to get to 
the goal. 

Now, what I want to ask some of my friends here 
is, Did you ever give ten deliberate minutes to try 
to face for yourselves, and put into plain words, 
what you are living for, and how you mean to secure 
it? Of course I know that you have given thought 


v. 15] THE WAY TO THE CITY 387 


and planning in plenty to the nearer aims, without 
which material life cannot be lived at all. I do not 
suppose that anybody here is chargeable with not 
having thought enough about how to get on in business, 
or in their chosen walk of life. It is not that kind of 
aim which I mean at all; but it is a point beyond it 
that I want to press upon you. You are like men who 
would carefully victual a ship and take the best in- 
formation for their guide as to what course to lie, and 
had never thought what they were going to do when 
they got to the port. So you say, ‘I am going to be 
such-and-such a thing. Well, what then? ‘Well, I 
am going to lay myself out for success.’ Be it com- 
mercial, be it intellectual, be it social, be it in the 
sphere of the affections, or whatever it may be. Well, 
what then? ‘Well, then I am going to advance in 
material prosperity, I hope, or in wisdom, or to be 
surrounded by loving faces of children and those that 
are dear to me. What then? ‘Then I am going to 
die. What then? 

It is not till you get to that last question, and have 
faced it and answered it, that you can be said to have 
taken the whole sweep of the circumstances into view, 
and regulated your course according to the dictates 
of common sense and right reason. And a terribly 
large number of us live with careful adaptation of 
means to ends in regard of all the smaller and more 
immediately to be realised aims of life, but have never 
faced the larger question which reduces all these 
smaller aims to insignificance. The simple child's 
interrogation which in the well-known ballad ripped 
the tinsel off the skeleton, and showed war in its 
hideousness, strips many of your lives of all pretence 
to be reasonable. ‘What good came of it at the last?’ 





388 ECCLESIASTES [oH. x. 


Can you answer the question that the infant lips — 
asked, and say, ‘This good will come of it at last. 
That I shall have God for my own, and Jesus Christ in 
my heart’? 

Brother! if I could only get you to this point, that 
- you would take half an hour now to think over 
what you ought to be, and to ask yourself whether 
your aims in life correspond to what your aims should 
be, Ishould have done more than I am afraid I shall 
do with some of you. The naturalist can tell when he 
picks up a skeleton something of the habits and the 
element of the creature to which it belonged. If it 
has a hollow sternum he knows it is meant to fly. On 
your nature is impressed unmistakably that your 
destiny is not to creep, but to soar. Not in vain does 
the Westminster Catechism lay the foundation of 
everything in this, the prime question for all men, 
‘What is the chief end of man?’ Ask that, and do not 
rest till you have answered it. 

Then there is another idea connected with this 
ignorance of my text—viz. that it is the result of 
folly. Now the words ‘folly’ and ‘foolish’ and ‘fool- 
ishness, and their opposites, ‘wisdom’ and ‘wise, in 
this Book of Ecclesiastes, as in the Book of Proverbs, 
do not mean merely dull stupidity intellectually, which 
is a thing for which a man is to be pitied rather than 
to be blamed, but they always carry besides the idea 
of intellectual defect, also the idea of moral obliquity. 
‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’; 
and, conversely, the absence of that fear is the founda~ 
tion of that which this writer stigmatises as ‘folly’ 
He is not merely sneering at men with small brains 
and little judgments. There may be plenty of us who 
are so, and yet are wise unto salvation and possessed 


v.15] THE WAY TO THE CITY 389 


of afar higher wisdom than that of this world. But 
he tells us that so strangely intertwined are the intel- 
lectual and moral parts of our nature, that whereso- 
ever there is the obscuration of the latter there is sure 
to be the perversion of the former, and the man knows 
not ‘how to go to the city’ because he is ‘foolish.’ 

That is to say, you go wrong in your judgment 
about your conduct because you have gone wrong 
morally. And your blunders about life, and your 
ignorance of its true end and aim, and your mistakes 
as to how to secure happiness and blessedness, are 
your own faults, and are owing to the aversion of 
your nature from that which is highest and noblest, 
even God and His service. Therefore you are not only 
to be pitied because you are out of the road, but to be 
blamed because you have darkened the eyes of your 
mind by loving the darkness rather than the light. 
And you ‘do not know how to go to the city,’ because 
you do not want to go to the city, and would rather 
huddle here in the wilderness, and live upon its poor 
supplies, than pass within the golden gates. My 
brethren! the folly which blinds a man to his true aim 
and mission in life is a folly which has in it the darker 
aspect of sin, and is punishable as such. 

III, Lastly, note the plain path which the foolish 
miss. 

He ‘does not know how to go to the city. What on 
earth will he be able to see if he cannot see that broad 
highway, beaten and white, stretching straight before 
him, over hill and dale, and going right to the gates? 
A man must be a fool who cannot find the way to 
London. 

The principles of moral conduct are trite and 
obvious. It is plain that it is better to be good than 





390 ECCLESIASTES [om x. 


bad. It is better to be unselfish than selfish. It is 
better not to live for things that perish, seeing that we 
are going to last for ever. It is better not to make 
the flesh our master here, seeing that the spirit will 
have to live without the flesh some day. It is better 
to get into training for the world to coma, seeing that 
we are all drifting thither. All these things are plain 
and obvious. 

Man’s destiny for God is unmistakable. ‘Whose 
image and superscription hath it?’ said Christ about 
the coin. ‘Czsar’s!’ ‘Then give it to Cesar. Whose 
image and superscription hath my heart, this restless 
heart of mine, this spirit that wanders on through 
space and time, homeless and comfortless, until it can 
grasp the Eternal? Who are you meant for? God! 
And every fibre of your nature has a voice to say so 
to you if you listen to it. So, then, a godless life such 
as some of you, my hearers, are contentedly living, 
ignores facts that are most patent to every man’s ex- 
perience. And while before you, huge ‘as a mountain, 
open, palpable, are the commonplaces and undeniable 
verities which declare that every man who is not a 
God-fearing man is a fool, you admit them all, and, 
bowing your heads in reverence, let them all go over 
you and produce no effect. 

The road is clearer than ever since Jesus Christ 
came. He has shown us the city, for He has brought 
life and immortality to light by the Gospel. He has 
shown us the road, for His life is the pattern of all 
that men ought to aim at and to be. The motto of the 
eternal Son of God, if I may venture upon such a 
metaphor, is like the motto of the heir-apparent of the 
English throne, ‘I serve.’ ‘Lo! I come to do Thy will’ 
—and that is the only word which will make a human 


v. 15] A NEW YEAR’ SERMON 391 


life peaceful and strong and beautiful. In the presence 
of His radiant and solitary perfection, men no longer 
need to wonder, What is the ideal to which conduct 
and character should be conformed? And Jesus Christ 
has come to make it possible to go to the city, by that 
eross on which He bore the burden of all sin, and 
takes away the sin of the world, and by that Spirit 
of life which He will impart to our weakness, and 
which makes our sluggish feet run in the way of His 
commandments, and not be weary, and walk and not 
faint. 

Take that dear Lord for your revelation of duty, for 
your Pattern of conduct, for the forgiveness of your 
sins, for the Inspirer with power to do His will, and 
then you will see stretching before you, high up above 
_the surrounding desert, so that no lion nor ravenous 
beast shall go up there, the highway on which the 
ransomed of the Lord shall walk, ‘and the wayfaring 
man, though a fool, shall not err therein.’ ‘Blessed are 
they that wash their robes, that they may enter in 
through the gates into the City.’ 


A NEW YEARS SERMON TO THE YOUNG 


‘Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of 
thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but 
know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.... 
Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come 
not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.’— 
ECCLES. xi, 9; xii. 1. 

THIs strange, and in some places perplexing Book of 
Kcclesiastes, is intended to be the picture of a man fight- 
ing his way through perplexities and half-truths to 
a clear conviction in which he can rest. What he says 


in his process of coming to that conviction is not always 


392 ECCLESIASTES [ou.x1 


to be taken as true. Much that is spoken in the earlier 


portion of the Book is spoken in order to be confuted, 


and its insufficiency, its exaggerations, its onesidedness, 
and its half-truths, to be manifest in the light of the 
ultimate conclusion to which he comes. Through all 
these perplexities he goes on ‘sounding his dim and 
perilous way, with pitfalls on this side of him and bogs 
on that, till he comes out at last upon the open way, 


with firm ground under foot and a clear sky overhead. © 
These phrases which I have taken are the opening 


sentences and the final conclusion on which he rests. 
How then are they meant to be understood? Is that 
saying, ‘Rejoice, O young man! in the days of thy 
youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy 
youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart and in the 
sight of thine eyes, to be taken as a bit of fierce irony? 
Is this a man taking the maxims of the foolish world 
about him and seeming to approve of them in order 
that he may face round at the end with a quick turn 
and a cynical face and hand them back their maxims 
along with that which will shatter them to pieces—as 
if he said, ‘Oh, yes! go on, talk your fill about making 
the best of this world, and rejoicing and doing as you 
like, dancing on the edge of a precipice, and fiddling, 
like Nero, whilst a worse fire than that of Rome is 
burning’? Well, I do not think that is the meaning of 
it. Though there is irony to be found in the Bible, I do 
not think that fierce irony like that which might do for 
the like of Dean Swift, is the intention of the Preacher. 
So I take these words to be said in good faith, as a 
frank recognition of the fact that, after all we have 
been hearing about vanity and vexation of spirit, life 
is worth living for, and that God means young people 
to be glad and to make the best of the fleeting years 







v. 9] A NEW YEAR’S SERMON 393 


that will never come back with the same buoyancy and 
elasticity all their lives long. And then I take it that 
the words added are not meant to destroy or neutralise 
the concession of the first sentence, but only to purify 
and ennoble a gladness which, without them, would be 
apt to be stained by many a corruption, and to make 
permanent a joy which, without them, would be sure 
to die down into the miserable, peevish, and feeble old 
age of which the grim picture follows, and to be 
quenched at last in death. So there are three words 
that I take out of this text of mine, and that I want to 
bring before my young friends as exhortations which 
it is wise to follow. These are Rejoice, Reflect, 
Remember. Rejoice—the fitting gladness of youth; 
reflect—the solemn thought that will guard the glad- 
ness from stain; remember—the religion which will 
make these things ever last. 

First of all ‘Rejoice. Do as you like, for that is the 
English translation of the words, ‘Walk in the ways 
of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes.’ Buoy- 
antly and cheerfully follow the inclinations and the 
desires which are stamped upon your nature and belong 
to your time of life. All young things are joyful, from 
the lamb in the pastures upwards, and are meant to 
beso. The mere bounding sense of physical strength 
which leads so many of you young men astray is a 
good thing and a blessed thing—a blessing to be thank- 
ful for and to-cherish. Your smooth cheeks, so unlike 
those of old age, are only an emblem of the com- 
parative freedom from care which belongs to your 
happy condition. Your memories are not yet like 
some—a book written within and without with the 
records of mourning and disappointment and crosses. 
There are in all probability long years stretching 





394 ECCLESIASTES (cH. x1. 


before you, instead of a narrow strip of barren sand, 
before you come to the great salt sea that is going to 
swallow you up, as is the case with some of us. Chris- 
tianity looks with complacency on your gladness, and 
does not mean to clip the wing of one white-winged 
pleasure, or to breathe one glimmer of blackness on 
your atmosphere. You are meant to be glad, but it is 
gladness in a far higher sense that I want to secure 
for you, or rather to make you secure for yourselves. 
God delights in the prosperity and light-hearted buoy- 
ancy of His children, especially of His young children. 
Ah! but I know there are young lives over which 
poverty or ill-health or sorrows of one kind or another 
have cast a gloom as incongruous to your time of life 
as snow in the garden in the spring, that pinches the 
crocuses and weighs down young green beech-leaves, 
would be. And if I am speaking to any young man or 
young woman at this time who by reason of painful 
outward circumstances has had but a chilling spring 
and youth, I would say to them, ‘don’t lose heart’; 
a cloudy morning often breaks into a perfect day. It 
is good for a man to have to ‘bear the yoke in his 
youth,’ and if you miss joy, you may get grace and 
strength and patience, which will be a blessing to you 
all your days. For all that, the ordinary course of 
things is that the young should be glad, and that the 
young life should be as the rippling brook in the sun- 
shine. I want to leave upon your minds this impres- 
sion, that it is all right and all in the order of God's 
providence, who means every one of you to rejoice in 
the days of your youth. The text says further, ‘Walk 
in the ways of thine heart.’ That sounds very like the 
unwholesome teaching, ‘ Follow nature; doas you like; 
let passions and tastes and inclinations be your guides.’ 


v. 9] A NEW YEAR'S SERMON 395 


Well, that needs to be set round with a good many 
guards to prevent it becoming a doctrine of devils. But 
for all that, I wish you to notice that that has a great 
and a religious side toit. You have come into posses- 
sion of this mystical life of yours, a possession which 
requires that you must choose what kind of life you 
will follow. Every one has this awful prerogative of 
being able to walk in the way of their heart. You 
have to answer for the kind of way that is, and the 
kind of heart out of which it has come. But I want 
to go to more important things, and so with a clear 
understanding that the joy of youth is all right and 
legitimate, that you are intended to be glad, and to 
feel the physical and intellectual spring and buoyancy 
of early days, let us go on to the next thing. ‘Rejoice,’ 
says my text, and it adds, ‘Reflect.’ It is one of the 
blessings of your time of life, my young friends, that 
you do not do much of that. Itis one of your happy 
immunities that you are not yet in the habit of looking 
at life as a whole, and considering actions and con- 
sequences. Keep that spontaneity as long as you can; 
it is a good thing to keep. But for all that, do not 
forget this awful thing, that it may turn to exaggera- 
tion and excess, and that it needs, like all other good 
things, to be guarded and rightly used. And so, 
‘Rejoice, and ‘ walk in the sight of thine eyes’; but— 
‘know that for all these things God will bring thee 
to judgment. Well, now, is that thought to come in 
(I was going to say, like a mourning-coach driven 
through a wedding procession) to kill the joys we 
have been seeming to receive from the former words? 
Are we taking back all that we have been giving, and 
giving out instead something that will make them all 
cower and be quiet, like the singing birds that stop 





396 ECCLESIASTES (ow. xr. 


their singing and hide in the leaves when they see the 
kite in the sky? No, there is no need for anything of 
the sort. ‘For all these things God will bring thee to 
judgment’: that is not the thought that kills, but 
that purifies and ennobles. Regard being had to the 
opinions expressed at various points in the earlier 
portion of this Book, we may be allowed to think of 
this testimony as having reference to the perpetual 
judgment that is going on in this world always over 
every man’s life. A great German thinker has it, in 
reference to the history of nations, that the history of 
the world is the judgment of the world, and although 
that is not true if it is a denial of a physical day of 
judgment, it is true in a very profound and solemn 
sense with regard to the daily life of every man, that 
whether there be a judgment-seat beyond the grave or 
not, and whether this Preacher knew anything about 
that or no, there is going on through the whole of 
a man’s life, and evolving itself, this solemn convic- 
tion, that we are to pass away from this present life. 
All our days are knit together as one whole. Yester- 
day is the parent of to-day, and to-day is the parent of 
all the to-morrows. The meaning and the deepest 
consequence of man’s life is that no feeling, no thought 
that flits across the mirror of his life and heart dies 
utterly, leaving nothing behind it. But rather the 
metaphor of the Apostle is the true one, ‘That which 
thou sowest, that shalt thou also reap.’ All your life 
a seed-time, all your life a harvest-time too, for the 
seed which I sow to-day is the seed which I have 
reaped from all my former sowings, and so cause and 
consequence go rolling on in life in extricable entangle- 
ment, issuing out in this, that whatever a man does 
lives on in him, and that each moment inherits the 


v. 9] A NEW YEAR'S SERMON 397 


whole consequence of his former life. And now, you 
young men and women, you boys and girls, mind! this 
seed-time is the one that will be most powerful in your 
lives, and there isa judgment you do not need to die to 
meet. If you are idle at school, you will never learn 
Latin when you go to business. If you are frivolous 
in your youth, if you stain your souls and soil your 
lives by outward coarse sin here in Manchester in your 
young days, there will be a taint about you all your 
lives. You cannot get rid of that brave law that 
‘Whatever a man sows, that, thirtyfold, sixtyfold, an 
hundredfold, that shall he also reap’—the same kind, 
but infinitely multiplied in quantity. Let me there- 
fore name some of the ways in which your joys or 
pleasures, as lads, as boys and girls, as growing young 
men and women, will bring you to judgment. Health, 
that is one; position, that is two; reputation, that is 
three; character, that is four. Did you ever see them 
build one of those houses they make in some parts 
of the country, with concrete instead of stones? Take 
a spadeful of the mud, and put it into a frame on the 
wall. When it is dry, take away the frame and the 
supports, and it hardens into rock. You take your 
single deeds—the mud sometimes, young men!—pop 
them on the wall, and think no more aboutit. Ay, 
but they stop there and harden there, and lo! a char- 
acter—a house for your soul to live in—health, position, 
memory, capacity, and all that. If you have not done 
certain things which you ought to have done, you will 
never be able to do them, and there are the materials 
for a judgment. That is going on every moment, and 
especially is it going on in the region of your pleasures: 
li they are unworthy, you are unworthy; if they are 
gross, and coarse, and low, and animal, they are drag- 





398 ECCLESIASTES (cH. XI. 


ging you down; if they are frivolous and foolish, they 
are making you a poor butterfly of a creature that is 
worth nothing and will be of no good to anybody; if 
they are pure, and chaste, and lofty, and virginal and 
white, they will make your souls good and gracious 
and tender with the tenderness and beauty of God. 
But that is not all. Iam not going to travel beyond 
the limits of this present life with any words of mine, 
but as I read this final conclusion in this Book of 
Ecclesiastes, I think I can perceive that the doubts and 
the scepticisms about a future life, and the difference 
between a man and a beast which are spoken of in the 
earlier chapters, have all been overcome, and the clear 
conviction of the writer is expressed in these twofold 
great sayings: ‘The spirit shall return unto God who 
gave it, and the words with which He stamps all His 
message upon our hearts, the final words of His book’; 
‘God shall bring every work into judgment with 
every secret thing. And I come to you and say, 
‘I suppose you believe in a state of retribution be- 
yond?’ I suppose that most of the young folk I am 
speaking to now at all events believe that ‘Thou 
wilt come to be our judge, as the Te Dewm has it; and 
that it is this same personal self of mine that is to 
stand there who is sitting here? God shall bring thee 
into judgment. Never mind what is to come of the 
body, the quivering, palpitating, personal centre. The 
very same self that I know myself to be will be carried 
there. Now, take that with you and lay it to heart, 
and let it have a bearing on your pleasure. It will kill 
nothing that deserves to live, it will take no real joy 
out of a man’s life. It will only strain out the poison 
that would kill you. You turn that thought upon 
your heart, my friends. Is it like a policeman’s bull’s- 


v. 9] A NEW YEAR’S SERMON 399 


eye turned upon a lot of bad characters hiding under a 
railway arch in the corner there? If so, the sooner 
you get rid of the pleasures and inclinations that slink 
away when that beam of light strikes their ugly faces, 
the better for yourselves and for your lives. ‘ Rejoice 
in the way of thine heart and, that thy joy may be 
pure, know that for all this God will bring thee into 
judgment.’ 

And now my last word, ‘Remember God,’ says my 
text. The former two sayings, if taken by themselves, 
would make a very imperfect guide to life. Self- 
indulgence regulated by the thought of retribution is 
a very low kind of life after all. There is something 
better in this world, and that is work; something 
higher, and that is duty; something nobler than self- 
indulgence, and that is self-sacrifice. And so no re- 
ligion worthy the name contents itself by saying to 
a man, ‘Be good and you will be glad’; but, ‘ Never 
mind whether you are glad; be good at any rate, and 
such gladness as is good for you will come to you, and 
you can want the rest.’ ‘Remember thy Creator in the 
days of thy youth.’ Recall God to your thoughts, and 
keep Him in your mind all the day long. That is won- 
derfully unlike your life, is it not? Remember thy 
Creator; shift the centre of your life. What I have 
been saying might be true of a man, the centre of 
whose life was himself, and such a man is next door to 
a devil, for, I suppose, the definition of devil is ‘self- 
engrossed still,’ and whosoever lives for himself is dead. 
Don't let the earth be the centre of your system, but 
the sun. Do not live to yourselves, or your pleasures 
will all be ignoble and creeping, but live to God. ‘Re- 
member. Well, then, you and I knowa good deal more 
about God than the writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes 


ih De ee j 
Has Aes 
mel. Te ct 


400 ECCLESIASTES [cn xn 


did—both about what He is and how to remember 
Him. I am not going to content myself by taking his 
point of view, but I must take a far higher and a 
far better one. If he had been here he would have 
said ‘Remember God.’ He would have said, ‘ Look at 
God in Jesus Christ, and trust Him and love Him; go to 
Him as your Saviour, and take all the burden of your 
past sin and lay it upon His merciful shoulders, and 
for His dear sake look for forgiveness and cleans- 
ing; and then for His dear sake live to serve and bless 
Him. Never mind about yourself, and do not think 
much about your gladness. Follow in the footsteps of 
Him who has shown us that the highest joy is to give 
oneself utterly away. Love Jesus Christ and trust 
Him and serve Him, and that will make all your glad- 
ness permanent. There is one thing I want to teach 
you. Look at that description, or rather read when 
you go home the description which follows my text, of 
that wretched old man who has got no hope in God and 
no joy, feeble in body, going down to the grave, and 
dying out at last. That is what rejoicing in the days 
of thy youth, and walking in the ways of thine own 
heart, come to when you do not remember God. There 
is nothing more miserable on the face of this earth 
than an ill-conditioned old man, who is ill-conditioned 
because he has lost his early joys and early strength, 
and has got nothing to make up for them. How many 
of your joys, my dear young friends, will last when old 
age comes to you? How many of them will survive 
when your eye is no longer bright, and your hand no 
longer strong, and your foot no longer fleet? How 
many of them, young woman! when the light is out of 
your eye, and the beauty and freshness out of your 
face and figure, when you are no longer able for 





v. 9] A NEW YEAR’S SERMON 401 


parties, when it is no longer a pastime to read novels, 
and when the ballroom is not exactly the place for you, 
—how many of your pleasures will survive? Young 
man! how many of yours will last when you can no 
longer go into dissipation, and stomach and system 
will no longer stand fast living, nor athletics, and the 
like? Oh! let me beseech thee, go to the ant and con- 
sider her ways, who in the summer layeth up for the 
winter; and do ye likewise in the days of your youth, 
store up for yourselves that which knows no change 
and laughs at the decay of flesh and sense. A thousand 
motives coincide and press on my memory if I had 
words and time to speak them. Let me beseech you— 
especially you young men and women of this congre- 
gation, of some of whom I may venture to speak as 
a father to his children, whom I have seen growing up, 
as it were, from your mothers’ arms, and the rest of you 
whom I do not know so well—Oh! carry away with you 
this beseeching entreaty of mine atthe end. Love Jesus 
Christ and trust to Him as your Saviour; serve Him 
as your Captain and your King in the days of your 
youth. Do not offer Him the fag end of a life—the last 
inch of the candle that is burning down into the 
socket. Do it now, for the moments are flying, and 
you may never have Him offered to you any more. If 
there is any softening, any touch of conscience in your 
heart, yield to the impulse and do not stifle it. Take 
Christ for your Saviour, take Him now— Now is the 
accepted time, now is the day of salvation.’ 


2c 


THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER 


‘Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come 
not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; 
2, While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the 
clouds return after the rain: 3. In the day when the keepers of the house shall 
tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because 
they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, 4. And the 
doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and h® 
shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be 
brought low; 5. Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears 
shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall 
be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the 
mourners go about the streets: 6. Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden 
bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel brokenat _ 
the cistern. 7. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: andthespirit ~ 
shall return unto God who gave it... . 13. Let us hear the conclusion of the 
whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty 
of man. 14. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret 
thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.'—Eccxés. xii. 1-7, 13, 14. 





THE Preacher has passed in review ‘all the works that 
are done under the sun,’ and has now reached the end 
of his long investigation. It has been a devious path. 
He has announced many provisional conclusions, which 
are not intended for ultimate truths, but rather re- 
present the progress of the soul towards the final, 
sufficient ground and object of belief and aim of all 
life, even God Himself. ‘Vanity of vanities’ is a cheer- 
less creed and a half-truth. Its completion lies in 
being driven, by recognising vanity as stamped on all 
creatures, to clasp the one reality. ‘Allis vanity’ apart 
from God, but He is fullness, and possessed and enjoyed 
and endured in Him, life is not ‘a striving after wind.’ 
Leave out this last section, and this book of so-called 
‘Wisdom’ is one-sided and therefore error, as is 
modern pessimism, which only says more feebly what 
the Preacher had said long ago. Take the rest of the 
book as the autobiography of a seeker after reality, 


and this last section as his declaration of where he had 
402 


vs. 1-7,13,14) THE CONCLUSION 403 


found it, and all the previous parts fall into their right 
places. : 

Our passage omits the first portion of the closing 
section, which is needed in order to set the counsel to 
remember the Creator in its right relation. Observe 
that, properly rendered, the advice in verse 1 is ‘re- 
member also,’ and that takes us back to the end of the 
preceding chapter. There the young are exhorted to 
enjoy the bright, brief blossom-time of their youth, 
withal keeping the consciousness of responsibility for 
its employment. In earlier parts of the book similar 
advice had been given, but based on different grounds. 
Here religion and full enjoyment of youthful buoyancy 
and delight in fresh, unhackneyed, homely pleasures are 
proclaimed to be perfectly compatible. The Preacher 
had no idea that a devout young man or woman was 
to avoid pleasures natural to their age. Only he wished 
their joy to be pure, and the stern law that ‘ whatsoever 
a man soweth that shall he also reap’ to be kept in 
mind. Subject to that limitation, or rather that guiding 
principle, it is not only allowable, but commanded, to 
‘put away sorrow and evil.’ Young people are often 
liable to despondent moods, which come over them like 
morning mists, and these have to be fought against. 
The duty of joy is the more imperative on the young 
because youth flies so fast, or, as the Preacher says, ‘is 
vanity.’ 

Now these advices sound very like the base incite- 
ments to sensual and unworthy delight which poets of 
the meaner sort, and some, alas! of the nobier in their 
meaner moments, have presented. But this writer is 
no teacher of ‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, and 
wicked trash of that sort. Therefore he brings side by 
side with these advices the other of our passage. That 


404 ECCLESIASTES (cH. XII. 


‘also’ saves the former from being misused, just as the 
thought of judgment did. 

That possible combination of hearty, youthful glee 
and true religion is the all-important lesson of this 
passage. The word for Creator is in the plural num- 
ber, according to the Hebrew idiom, which thereby 
expresses supremacy or excellence. The name of 
‘Creator’ carries us back to Genesis, and suggests one 
great reason for the injunction. It is folly to forget 
Him on whom we depend for being; it is ingratitude 
to forget, in the midst of the enjoyments of our bright, 
early days, Him to whom we owe them all. The advice 
is specially needed; for youth has so much, that is 
delightful in its novelty, to think about, and the world, 
on both its innocent and its sinful side, appeals to it so 
strongly, that the Creator is only too apt to be crowded 
out of view by His works. The temptation of the 
young is to live in the present. Reflection belongs to 
older heads; spontaneous action is more characteristic 
of youth. Therefore, they specially need to make 
efforts to bring clearly to their thoughts both the 
unseen future and Him who is invisible. The advice is 
specially suitable for them; for what is begun early is 
likely to last and be strong. 

It is hard for older men, stiffened into habits, and 
with less power and love of taking to new courses, to 
turn to God, if they have forgotten Him in early days. 
Conversion is possible at any age, but it is less likely 
as life goes on. The most of men who are Christians 
have become so in the formative period between boy- 
hood and thirty. After that age, the probabilities of 
radical change diminish rapidly. So, ‘Remember... 
in the days of thy youth, or the likelihood is that you 
will never remember. To say, ‘I mean to have my 





J 
a 
- 

; 
‘ 
x4 
{ 
: 


vs. 1-7,13,14) THE CONCLUSION 405 


fling, and I shall turn over a new leaf when I am older, 
is to run dreadful risk. Perhaps you will never be 
older. Probably, if you are, you will not want to turn 
the leaf. If you do, what a shame it is to plan to give 
God only the dregs of life! You need Him quite as 
much, if not more, now in the flush of youth as in old 
age. Why should yourob yourself of years of blessing, 
and lay up bitter memories of wasted and polluted 
moments? If ever you turn to God in your older days, 
nothing will be so painful as the remembrance that 
you forgot Him so long. 

The advice is further important, because it presents 
the only means of delivering life from the ‘vanity’ 
which the Preacher found in it all. Therefore he sets 
it at the close of his meditations. This is the practical 
outcome of them all. Forget God, and life is a desert. 
Remember Him, and ‘the desert will rejoice and 
blossom as the rose.’ 

The verses from the middle of verse 1 to the end of 
verse 7 enforce the exhortation by the consideration of 
what will certainly follow youth, and advise remem- 
brance of the Creator before that future comes. So 
much is clear, but the question of the precise mean- 
ing of these verses is much too large for discussion 
here. The older explanation takes them for an 
allegory representing the decay of bodily and mental 
powers in old age, whilst others think that in them the 
advance of death is presented under the image of an 
approaching storm. Wright, in his valuable com- 
mentary, regards the description of the gradual waning 
away of life in old age, in the first verses, as being set 
forth under images drawn from the closing days of the 
Palestinian winter, which are dreaded as peculiarly 
unhealthy, while verse 4b and verse 5 present the 


406 ECCLESIASTES (oH. x11. 


advent of spring, and contrast the new life in animals 
and plants with the feebleness of the man dying in his 
chamber and unable to eat. Still another explanation 
is that the whole is part of a dirge, to be taken liter- 
ally, and describing the mourners in house and garden. 
I venture, though with some hesitation, to prefer, on 
the whole, the old allegorical theory, for reasons which 
it would be impossible to condense here. It is by no 
means free from difficulty, but is, as I think, less difficult 
than any of its rivals, 

Interpreters who adopt it differ somewhat in the 
explanation of particular details, but, on the whole, 
one can see in most of the similes sufficient correspond- 
ence for a poet, however foreign to modern taste 
such a long-drawn and minute allegory may be. 
‘The keepers of the house’ are naturally the arms; 
the ‘strong men, the legs; the ‘grinding women, the 
teeth; the ‘women who look out at the windows, 
the eyes; ‘the doors shut towards the street, either 
the lips or, more probably, the ears. ‘The sound of the 
grinding, which is ‘low,’ is by some taken to mean the 
feeble mastication of toothless gums, in which case 
the ‘doors’ are the lips, and the figure of the mill is 
continued. ‘Arising at the voice of the bird’ may 
describe the light sleep or insomnia of old age; but, 
according to some, with an alteration of rendering 
(‘The voice riseth into a sparrow’s’), it is the ‘childish 
treble’ of Shakespeare. The former is the more 
probable rendering and reference. The allegory is 
dropped in verse 5a, which describes the timid walk of 
the old, but is resumed in ‘the almond trees shall 
flourish’; that is, the hair is blanched, as the almond 
blossom, which is at first delicate pink, but fades into 
white. The next clause has an appropriate meaning in 





, 
q 
. 


vs. 1-7,13,14] THE CONCLUSION 407 


the common translation, as vividly expressing the loss 
of strength, but it is doubtful whether the verb here 
used ever means ‘to be a burden.’ The other explana- 
tions of the clause are all strained. The next clause is 
best taken, as in the Revised Version, as describing the 
failure of appetite, which the stimulating caper-berry 
is unable to rouse. All this slow decay is accounted 
for, ‘because the man is going to his long home,’ and 
already the poet sees the mourners gathering for the 
funeral procession. 

The connection of the long-drawn-out picture of 
senile decay with the advice to remember the Creator 
needs no elucidation. That period of failing powers is 
no time to begin remembering God. How dreary, too, 
it will be, if God is not the ‘strength of the heart, 
when ‘heart and flesh fail’! Therefore it is plain 
common sense, in view of the future, not to put off to 
old age what will bless youth, and keep the advent of 
old age from being wretched. 

Verses 6 and 7 still more stringently enforce the 
precept by pointing, not to the slow approach, but 
to the actual arrival of death. If a future of possible 
weakness and gradual creeping in on us of death is 
reason for the exhortation, much more is the certainty 
that the crash of dissolution will come. The allegory 
is partially resumed in these verses. The ‘golden bowl’ 
is possibly the head, and, according to some, the ‘silver 
cord’ is the spinal marrow, while others think rather 
of the bowl or lamp as meaning the body, and the cord 
the soul which, as it were, holds it up. The ‘pitcher’ is 
the heart, and the ‘wheel’ the organs of respiration. 
Be this as it may, the general thought is that death 
comes, shivering the precious reservoir of light, and 
putting an end to drawing of life from the Fountain of 


408 ECCLESIASTES (cH. xm. 





bodily life. Surely these are weighty reasons for the 
Preacher’s advice. Surely it is well for young hearts 
sometimes to remember the end, and to ask, ‘What 
will ye do in the end?’ and to do before the end what 
is so hard to begin doing at the end, and so needful to 
have done if the end is not to be worse than ‘ vanity.’ 

The collapse of the body is not the end of the man, 
else the whole force of the argument in the preceding 
verses would disappear. If death is annihilation, what 
reason is there for seeking God before it comes? There- 
fore verse 7 is no interpolation to bring a sceptical 
book into harmony with orthodox Jewish belief, as 
some commentators affirm. The ‘contradictio1.’ be- 
tween it and Ecclesiastes iii. 21 is alleged as proof of its 
having been thus added. But there is no contradiction. 
The former passage is interrogative, and, like all the 
earlier part of the book, sets forth, not the Preacher's 
ultimate convictions, but a phase through which he 
passed on his way to these. It is because man is two- 
fold, and at death the spirit returns to its divine Giver, 
that the exhortation of verse 1 is pressed home with 
such earnestness. 

The closing verses are confidently asserted to be, like 
verse 7, additions in the interests of Jewish ‘ orthodoxy.’ 
But Ecclesiastes is made out to be a ‘sceptical book’ 
by expelling these from the text, and then the character. 
thus established is taken to prove that they are not 
genuine. It is a remarkably easy but not very logical 
process. 

‘The end of the matter’ when all is heard, is, to ‘fear 
God and keep His commandments.’ The inward feeling 
of reverent awe which does not exclude love, and the 
outward life of conformity to His will, is ‘the whole 
duty of man,’ or ‘the duty of every man. And that 


ys. 1-7,13,14] THE CONCLUSION 409 


plain summary of all that men need to know for 
practical guidance is enforced by the consideration of 
future judgment, which, by its universal sweep and 
all-revealing light, must mean the judgment in another 
life. 

Happy they who, through devious mazes of thought 
and act, have wandered seeking for the vision of any 
good, and having found all to be vanity, have been led 
at last to rest, like the dove in the ark, in the broad 
simplicity of the truth that all which any man needs 
for blessedness in the buoyancy of fresh youthful 
strength and in the feebleness of decaying age, in the 
stress of life, in the darkness of death, and in the day 
of judgment, is to ‘fear God and keep His command- 
ments’! 













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